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The two figures, mother and daughter, moved like patterns of light, almost strobing, as they passed in and out of the yellowy shade of lemon trees. Suddenly, Jhoti noticed a swing made of rope and a plank of wood, hanging loosely from one of the branches. Harold Chadwick had rigged it up only yesterday for Edith. Her body suddenly animated, and clasping Marvinder on her knee, Jhoti jumped on the swing and pushed away, urging it up and up, her head tossed back in ecstasy and the child’s laughter pealing through the still afternoon.
‘Why on earth did Govind have to go and get married so soon?’ Dora sighed with frustration. The two of them were still just children. It was ridiculous.
Harold, of course had minded for other reasons. Govind was his protégé, a symbol of everything Harold believed in for India, and he was afraid at first, that marriage would mean the end of all his ambitions for the boy.
Harold had found his home in India. Originally, he had gone over to visit an uncle of his who was a tea planter. ‘Just for a break,’ he’d said. ‘See the world before I get trapped for ever in some job in the city.’ But somehow, India struck a deep chord. He travelled it from one end to another, and found it hard to leave. The experience had been almost spiritual. He could only describe it as a feeling of having found his true home. He knew he must return; that this was where he wanted to spend the rest of his life, and he came back to England only so that he could qualify as a teacher and pursue that one goal.
It was at the teacher training college in London, that he and Dora met. They both loved music; she a pianist and he a violinist. They often played together and, of course, went to as many concerts as their meagre student funds allowed.
Dora was intending to go back to the Midlands from where she came originally. Like a good middle-class young woman, she would take a respectable teacher’s job until a suitable husband came along, and then she would join the ranks of housewives and give birth to more good little middle-class children. But then Harold asked her to marry him, and for a while she went into a state of total confusion and indecision. She found herself loving a man whose plans didn’t in the least fit in with her own.
Of course, she went back home to discuss it with her parents. They were not at all pleased with the proposition. The idea of her going to India to live and make a home there seemed foolhardy, risky; had she considered the consequences for their children, if they had any? There would be the separation, for of course, nobody kept their children in India beyond infancy, but sent them back to boarding schools, doomed, in many cases, not to see them for years at a time.
Worst of all was when they actually met Harold. It was his enthusiasm which really galled them. The way his eyes shone when he talked about the people of India; their wisdom, the customs, the beauty, the poverty, the hardship, and his absolute belief that one day, this ‘noble’ people would rule themselves. ‘After all,’ he reminded Dora’s parents, ‘Indians were one of the most civilised and cultured people on earth at a time when we Britons were running around in woad.’
It was at this point that Dora’s father could contain himself no longer. Already red in the face from mounting irritation, he exploded with ‘rubbish!’ and retreated into the garden to light up his pipe.
Later, when Harold had returned to London, Dora’s mother had come into her room that night, and sat by her bed.
‘Dora darling,’ she had said in the soft, anxious voice which had become her hallmark over the years, ‘Dora, your father and I, well, we don’t really consider this young man to be very suitable for you. I mean . . . he is a bit . . . immature. One of these idealists. A socialist too, I wouldn’t be surprised. We, er . . . really can’t allow you to throw yourself away on a man like that.’ She gazed pleadingly into her daughter’s eyes silently begging her not to rebel or make life difficult.
Dora was indeed full of doubts, but for different reasons. It was not at all what she had planned. She had wanted first of all to experience the independence of having her own profession and income: then, in her own time, when she felt ready, to marry some nice steady respectable man – a banker maybe, or even a vicar. She imagined herself leading a small town life, accompanying local singers or instrumentalists in a purely amateur way; perhaps giving little soirees in their comfortably off suburban home, and gaining some kind of minor fame as a talented and much sought after hostess in the locality.
When Harold was offered a teaching job in India and asked her to go with him, she refused, and for a while, did everything she could to dismiss him from her life. Harold, always the eternal optimist, declared that he was sure she would come round to the notion of marrying him one of these days, but in the meantime, he would go on ahead. ‘I’m sure we’re right for each other,’ he said. ‘Perhaps when I’m established out there and have found us a home, you’ll come and join me in India!’ Then he was gone.
Without Harold, the world suddenly seemed a greyer place. The pavements were harder and the weather bleaker. Nothing seemed to matter the way it did. Dora trudged on with her training; became a teacher and tried to merge into the provincial life of her small town. Her parents hoped she would marry ‘that nice young doctor,’ but neither the nice young doctor, who did indeed propose, nor the other suitable bachelors in the district, with their respectable jobs and comfortable houses, were able to quell a choking feeling of loss.
Harold wrote often. He had been sent to teach in a tiny rural village in the Punjab called Deri. He was learning the language and was full of idealism about bringing education to the villagers and persuading them to send their children to school, before putting them to work on the land. He wrote in particular about a boy called Govind.
‘Govind is just the son of an illiterate peasant farmer, but he is one of the most intelligent boys I’ve ever come across anywhere. I’m sure I can help him go far. I wish you would come out here and see for yourself, Dora. I could do with you by my side. I could do with your good sense to talk over my day, to discuss and make plans. Most of all, I could do with a good accompanist. I get tired of the sound of a solo violin, and God knows what these people make of it. I can get hold of a piano, you know . . .’
‘Get hold of a piano,’ Dora wrote back at last. ‘I’m coming!’
Now, standing here, thousands of miles away on an Indian verandah Dora smiled, remembering her incredulity and joy.
As she relished her own happiness, she wondered about Jhoti swooping up and down on Harold’s garden swing. She began to feel linked to her in some peculiar way. While she and Harold were being married in All Souls Church, Jhoti was having an arranged marriage to Govind in her village down the road. When Dora became pregnant, Govind told Harold that his wife, too, was expecting a baby. They both produced girls, although Harold remarked, ‘I don’t think Govind will be half so pleased with a daughter as I am.’
Suddenly, feeling both amazed, yet strangely perturbed, Dora realised that she and Jhoti were both pregnant again at the same time. She watched the young girl as she stopped swinging, heaved Marvinder off her lap and stood up, smoothing out her tunic.
She curved her hands round her stomach and, for the first time in her life, felt that she wasn’t entirely in control of her own destiny. Her happiness gave way to melancholy.
As Jhoti and Marvinder moved slowly round the back of the bungalow and out of sight, Dora felt two arms clasp her round her knees.
‘Mummy. Swing. Let’s go on Daddy’s swing.’ Little golden-haired Edith, still tousled with her afternoon’s sleep looked up at her with demanding blue eyes.
‘No, baby.’ The ayah came and extricated her. ‘Leave Mummy. I’ll swing you.’
‘That’s all right, Shanta. I’ll do it.’ She took Edith’s hand and jumped her down the verandah steps. They walked, the two of them, along the winding path, between the carefully created geometrical flower beds which Harold had carved out of the red earth.
Suddenly Dora was gripped by an overwhelming sense of helplessness; a feeling of plunging downwards as in a bad dream, without power, without knowing where and how and if she would land. She stopped in her tracks as Edith ran on to the swing. She felt afraid. If after all, one had no power; if there was no such thing as free will, that everyone was simply part of some divine purpose, then how could she control anything? How could she protect her child or plan for the future? Perhaps nothing she did amounted to anything, because it was all pre-ordained anyway.
The ayah squatted on the verandah watching her. Dora felt uncomfortable. What was she thinking? Did she mind serving this white foreign woman, who had the audacity to come and claim ownership of this land; who expected to be in command and who claimed superiority in all things just because of an accident of birth?
Suddenly, rarely, Dora was overcome with homesickness. ‘England.’ She spoke the word out loud. She turned her eyes westwards, beyond the compound gate, over the long, white road, on and on over the fields of mustard seed aflame with yellow flowers, till her eye settled on the simple, rounded oblong shape of the Hindu temple. The sun was halfway down the sky, and by nightfall would set just behind the temple.
Impatient with waiting to be pushed on the swing, Edith came running. ‘Come on, Mummy. Push me. Come on.’ She tugged her mother’s arm.
‘Edith,’ Dora said, picking up her child. ‘Do you see that temple far away over there, where the sun is beginning to drop through the sky?’
Edith nodded, putting her thumb in her mouth.
‘If you could go over there, and keep on going west, do you know where you would come to?’
Edith shook her head, mystified by her mother’s strange mood.
‘Edith, you would come to England. England is over there, and one day, I’ll take you.’
‘Swing, Mummy, swing me!’ Edith wriggled out of her arms and forced her mother to put her down.
Unsure how to quell this sudden sense of desolation, Dora took a few moments to fight back her tears. Then with a bright shout, she called out, ‘Hold tight now! I’m coming to push you!’
THREE
The Birth
‘Aloo, okra, baigan ho,
Chaaval, Channa, Bhoona lo.’
Marvinder sat in the earth repeating her rhyme over and over again. She scooped up soil with her newly acquired tin and poured it into the bottom half of a broken clay water pot which she had found near the village pond.
‘This is for Ma, this is for Pa, this is for Ajit, this is for Chachaji . . .’ she went on listing all the members of her extended family. Every now and then she glanced across to a door of a side room, where her mother was the subject of quite unaccustomed attention. Women had been going in and out all morning looking worried. Even fierce Grandmother had an air of concern about her.
Marvinder felt confused and afraid. She had never before been kept away from her mother and every now and then, she heard her mother give a shuddering cry which struck Marvinder to the heart with terror.
‘Aloo, okra, brinjal ho,
Chaaval, Channa, Pani Lo.’
She repeated the rhyme over and over like a magic spell as she dug and dug into the earth.
One of her aunts suddenly emerged from the room, pushing back the broken bamboo blind, allowing Marvinder a snatched glimpse inside. Jhoti was lying on a bed, her head thrust back, her hands gripping the edges of the thin mattress on which she lay. The heat of the day and the struggle of childbirth brought the perspiration pouring out of her body and, as one aunt wiped her brow and mopped up the moisture which trickled in rivulets down her face, another had a goblet of water, and holding her like a child, held the rim to her lips so that she could drink and drink.
‘Aunty, Aunty! I want my ma!’ cried Marvinder, leaping to her feet. ‘Can I go in now?’ She clutched at the tunic of an aunt who had emerged from the room. She was one of the younger ones, Shireen. She could be kind some times, and when she had a few moments between jobs, would often become girlish and run out to join the children in their games.
‘No, baba,’ said Shireen gently, and she picked up Marvinder and lodged her on her hip. She affectionately smoothed back a straggle of hair which had fallen across her eyes. ‘You must be patient. Your ma is soon going to give you a brother or maybe a sister and if you get in the way, it will make it all the harder for us to help her. Do you understand?’ Marvinder nodded silently and Shireen put her down again near her precious tin and broken clay pot. ‘Play now. I have to go and find Basant,’ she said urgently, and set off running.
Some older children who were just coming in from school heard Shireen, and couldn’t resist coming to tease Marvinder.
‘Is Basant coming to see to your mother? Oh dear. Basant is a witch, didn’t you know?’
Marvinder looked up at them with large, terrified eyes.
‘A witch?’ she exclaimed with a shudder. ‘What do witches do? Will she hurt my mother?’
‘Witches come out at night and go round looking for people so that they can suck their blood,’ said one child sticking out his fingers at Marvinder, as if they were claws.
‘Witches cast spells on babies about to be born so that the baby comes out with two heads, or with a devil’s tail or sometimes with horns, and the babies are witches too, and suck their mother’s blood. Whooo . . .’ and the child lunged towards Marvinder making sucking noises with his lips.
Marvinder backed away with horror. ‘Will Basant do that to my ma? Will she do that to my baby?’
‘Oh yes!’ chorused the children malevolently. ‘Just you wait and see. Your baby will be a monster. A green monster with snakes round its neck, and goat’s feet and a tongue dripping with blood like Kali,’ and they all rushed at Marvinder with their tongues sticking out and their arms outstretched as if to tear her to pieces.
Marvinder broke into desperate screams and began running.
Sobbing and gasping, she ran and ran until she reached the road. She wanted to go to the Chadwicks’ bungalow and find Maliki. Perhaps Maliki could save her mother from the witch.
In the distance, a cyclist was coming towards her, his shape shimmering out of the heat haze. Like some strange bird, with blue turbaned head, white shirt puffed up with the wind, and thin, cotton trousers flapping to the sides, he came closer and closer.
Marvinder hardly saw him what with the tears in her eyes, and her concentration on running. He passed her. Stopped and looked back. ‘Marvi?’ the man cried.
Marvinder didn’t stop running. ‘Hey, Marvi . . . Marvinder! Stop! It’s me, your father.’ He whirled his bike round and pedalled a few turns to catch up with her, then jumping off, he dropped his bike to the ground and lunged out to grab the child.
At first Marvinder struggled and screamed. ‘Let me go, let me go! I must rush to Maliki and tell her that a witch is going to put a spell on my mother and turn my baby into a monster.’ She wriggled violently, trying to free herself.
Govind knelt down on the dusty road so that he was at eye level with his daughter and gripping her chin in one hand, turned her face towards his. ‘Marvi, look at me. Who am I?’
Marvinder looked at him, blinking through her tears.
‘Who am I, Marvi?’ he asked again as she quietened slightly.
He slackened his grip on her face and with a thumb, wiped away a tear from her cheek.
‘Papaji ?’ she asked with amazement. Marvinder recognised her father, although he was home so little. Until now, he hadn’t taken much notice of her and he was more like a stranger.
She looked into his pale, almond eyes, she touched his cheek in recognition. She was too young to note how her father’s face had changed. He was no longer a boy; callow, broken-voiced and a mixture of shyness and insensitivity; now, his voice had deepened, the skin of his face toughened, and his hair had grown sufficiently for his beard to be bound up under his chin.
Marvinder clasped her arms round his neck and pleaded with him.
‘Pa, Shireen has gone to fetch Basant, the witch, and our baby will be born a monster and will suck Ma’s blood. How can we stop her?’
‘Who told you Basant was a witch?’ demanded Govind angrily.
‘The other children. They told me she makes babies to be born with two heads and goat’s feet . . . and . . .’
‘Stop, stop!’ shouted Pa. ‘If I catch hold of the children who told you that nonsense, I’ll give them such a thrashing . . .’ Marvinder started crying again.
‘Listen to me, Marvinder, Basant is no witch. She is the best healer in the world. You don’t know how many lives she has saved. There’s nothing Basant doesn’t know. She helps to bring babies into the world too. They say, if you want your baby to be born safely and alive, then get Basant. She’s the best midwife there is. She brought me into the world, and am I a monster?’ He pulled a face and growled fiercely into her neck making her burst out laughing. ‘That’s better,’ smiled Govind. ‘Now don’t let me hear you ever say a single bad word against her. Those children were just having fun making you scared, and I tell you, I’ll give them such a fright they’ll never be so cruel again.’
With that, Govind lifted Marvinder on to the crossbar of his bicycle. ‘Hold tight,’ he ordered, then turning round pushed off and headed for home as fast as he could.
When they left the road and swooped down the track to their village at a terrifying speed, Marvinder shut her eyes fearfully. She opened them again when, with squealing brakes, they came to a standstill, and she found that they were outside their home.
People began calling out at the sight of her father. ‘Eh! Look! Govind’s here! Govind’s come home.’
‘My son! How did you know when to return?’ cried his mother, excitedly pushing her way out of the labour room. Govind knelt on the ground and kissed his mother’s feet respectfully.
‘Quick, bring water for Govind,’ she ordered turning round to one of her daughters-in-law.
‘I knew Jhoti’s time was near and decided,’ Govind explained, getting to his feet and touching his head and heart in greeting. ‘Mr Chadwick sahib was visiting the school in Amritsar and he suggested I travel back with him. The memsahib, his wife, she too is very near her time. He has already taken her to their mission hospital.’
‘Humm,’ grunted his mother. ‘Well, they have their ways and we have ours. Shireen has gone for Basant. She should be here soon. I hope she hurries. Jhoti’s pains are coming very close now.’
Someone brought a pitcher of water. Govind held out his cupped hands while the woman poured. He tossed it first into his face and round his neck; she poured again and he wetted his arms up to his elbows, and finally, she poured again, several times over while he bent his mouth down to his hands and drank till he felt refreshed.
For a while, the attention was diverted from Jhoti as the women flocked round Govind, clucking and fussing; and it was Govind who said, ‘Come, come, enough of all this. How is my wife?’
‘She is doing well, brother,’ they assured him. ‘It will not be long now.’
When the women told Jhoti that her husband had arrived, she felt a sudden rush of tears to her eyes. Till then, she had maintained a reserved stance, never admitting to the intense discomfort she felt; nor sharing with anyone her puzzlement as to why her second confinement had been harder to bear than the first.
With the news that Govind was here, Jhoti gave a deep sigh of contentment. Suddenly she felt she could bear anything . . . if only . . . if only she could present him with a son.
It seemed an age before Shireen appeared, clutching Basant at the elbow and guiding her at a snail’s pace towards the house.
When Marvinder saw her, she shrank into her father.
‘Are you sure Basant isn’t a witch?’ she whispered. Basant looked in every way what she imagined a witch to be like, she was so bent and wizened; her skin hung on her thin arms like wrinkled brown paper and her fingers, which hooked round a staff, were like the scaly claws of chicken’s feet. Worst of all were her eyes. They stared ahead as if seeing all things, and yet, Marvinder shuddered; although they appeared to penetrate even into her very soul, they were the creamy, sightless eyes of the blind.
‘No, baba. Basant isn’t a witch. Just you wait and see. Soon we will have a baby; the finest baby the world has ever seen; a baby for you to take care of and be a good big sister. Will you do that, Marvinder?’ her father asked. ‘Will you protect your little one; make sure he never runs into any danger; guard him with your life? Do you promise?’
Marvinder returned his gaze. Her father looked so serious; as if what he had asked her was very important. It made her feel suddenly grown up.
‘Yes, Papaji, I promise.’
The day ended abruptly. The sun went down like a rapidly sinking ship and suddenly it was dark. Basant dismissed all the women. Now there were just she and Jhoti alone in the room. The only light came from a weak, kerosene lantern which hung on the verandah outside. Its useless beams barely struggled through the narrow iron-barred window, to cast pale stripes on the dung-smeared walls.
‘Could we have light in here?’ asked Jhoti fearfully.
‘What do we need light for?’ rasped the old blind woman.
She came towards Jhoti, her hands spread out in front of her. Jhoti shrank away, unable to control the repugnance she felt at being touched by such a creature. She stiffened with horror as the hands hovered over her face. She rolled her lips together, sealing her mouth so that no cry would escape her. The hands came down, down, steadily, without trembling. They enveloped her face. The fingers traced the outlines of her features; her brow, nose, eyes, cheeks, chin and jaw-line.
‘Here’s a pretty one to be sure,’ murmured Basant in a low voice. Her hands continued their exploration over her face, head, neck, chest, soothing and massaging as she worked her way down towards her abdomen. Her touch was the touch of a potter, working the clay, softening it, manipulating it, moulding it, with all the years of experience and craftsmanship pouring through her fingers and palms. She worked her hands over the young woman’s belly, pressing deeper this way and that to feel the shape of the baby inside.
‘Ah!’ she whispered. ‘That is why you feel discomfort. Your infant wants to greet the world with his bottom!’
By this time, all Jhoti’s resistence had dissolved away. She lay beneath the old woman’s hands, pliable, relaxed and completely trusting.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ murmured the old voice, ‘I will turn him round so that he can face the world like a man.’
‘He?’ asked Jhoti softly.
‘Perhaps,’ Basant chuckled. Then suddenly her movements became fierce. She kneaded into Jhoti’s belly, grunting with the effort as gradually she eased the infant round in the womb until its head faced the exit it must use to emerge into the world.
At last, Jhoti gave one cry and it was done.
‘Now we’ll have a better time of it,’ said Basant.
Jhoti slept. It was as if the baby quite enjoyed its new position and had changed its mind about being born. The contractions diminished to the softest of sensations, squeezing and letting go, squeezing and letting go.
Outside in the courtyard, Govind squatted, wide-eyed in vigil. Marvinder lay asleep, outstretched across his knees. He stroked her forehead. The glow from the nearby brazier outlined her high cheekbones and her straight nose; her long eyelashes seemed tipped with flame, fluttering rapidly from time to time as dreams enveloped her brain. He ran a finger along her lips and chin, yet hardly noticed her determined mouth, for all his senses were strained towards the room where Jhoti lay. Being a father made him feel important, especially if, he hardly dared pray, this new baby was a boy.