Read Online The In-Between World of Vikram Lall by M. G. Vassanji - Free Book Online
Authors: M. G. Vassanji
Tags: General Fiction
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was a girl once again, radiant and free. How we treasure those youthful years of our lives, what happiness hers must have meant to her.
I would climb on your back and you would take me around, Mahesh began.
On all fours like a horse—hut-hut-hut-chalo!
From room to room and even to the neighbour’s—you must have scraped your knees from that ordeal.
She smiled, said: And you held on to me by my pigtail.
They were silent for a while. Then she murmured: How I remember that house, each and every corner in it, every crack on the wall, I can take you to the spot where the ceiling leakedduring monsoon, where the floor was broken under the dining table, the chip on the seventh step—
And I can take you through the streets of Peshawar blind-folded—the halwai where we bought jelebi, the police station where Father locked me up, the dhaba where the Congress youth would meet for strategy. I can name for you all the attendants who served at that dhaba. We’ll never see those streets again. All that madness, cutting up a country in two—that’s the British for you: divide and rule.
But we asked for Partition.
Who?
The Hindus and Muslims.
Not all of them. Just the rich and privileged, misleading the others.
They were silent again. Mother looked up toward the rooms where Papa had gone a few minutes ago, in case he needed her. Then she said, Do you remember when Ma died?
He looked vacantly at her, nodded. Father took me to the pyre when he lighted the fire. Her soul has flown away, he said, it’s only the empty body. She’ll come back in a new body. I rather preferred the old body. How would I recognize the new one, I used to ask him.
I remember, she said. I had to be with you even as I knew she was in pain and dying, and her sisters had gathered around…
After a pause, my mother looked at him and said quickly, Mahesh Bhaiya, why didn’t you make up with him—poor Father—
He was the one who cast me out! He arrested me, his own son, he put me in prison!
Not you alone, and that was his job.
Fine job. Working for the British. And there was that other thing too, in 1946, after the world war.
That was also his job.
He was a traitor.
Don’t say that, Mahesh! It was his job, his duty. He was a police inspector. If he had not kept the law—
If who had not kept the law? Papa said, walking in, having just had a wash, smelling of hair oil. He pulled me gently by the ear from where I sat, at the door, looking outside at the road, and said, My spy will tell me, won’t you?
Meanwhile Mother pretended the tears were not glistening in her eyes and gave us all a smile.
Grandfather Verma a traitor! Mahesh Uncle in jail! Now that was food for the imagination…but that life was far away in India and in the past. My life was so ordinary!
There was a framed photo of Grandfather Verma, from the chest up, on one of the walls in the house. He seemed to be in some kind of uniform, police I assumed; he had a large forehead and a thin moustache, and there was a trace of a smile on his lips. He looked rather like the police superintendents of the Indian movies of the fifties and sixties, someone who could have been the movie idol Dev Anand’s superior officer. He sent us cards for Diwali and New Year, with little notes that began, How are you, my little ones? And we in turn wrote short letters to him guided by Mother. After that overheard partial revelation from Mahesh Uncle, I looked upon the photo of Grandfather Verma with some respect. He was my past and there was a mystery about him, which I would find out as I grew up, when the time came for me to know.
I remember another ritual of my father’s. It was a frightening one, performed once or twice a month, late on a Sunday night. Very suddenly, a little after nine o’clock just as the news ended, as if at a whim he would go over to the front door, pull aside the drape on it, and stare outside for a minute or so. By this time Mother would be extremely nervous. Slowly Papa
I would climb on your back and you would take me around, Mahesh began.
On all fours like a horse—hut-hut-hut-chalo!
From room to room and even to the neighbour’s—you must have scraped your knees from that ordeal.
She smiled, said: And you held on to me by my pigtail.
They were silent for a while. Then she murmured: How I remember that house, each and every corner in it, every crack on the wall, I can take you to the spot where the ceiling leakedduring monsoon, where the floor was broken under the dining table, the chip on the seventh step—
And I can take you through the streets of Peshawar blind-folded—the halwai where we bought jelebi, the police station where Father locked me up, the dhaba where the Congress youth would meet for strategy. I can name for you all the attendants who served at that dhaba. We’ll never see those streets again. All that madness, cutting up a country in two—that’s the British for you: divide and rule.
But we asked for Partition.
Who?
The Hindus and Muslims.
Not all of them. Just the rich and privileged, misleading the others.
They were silent again. Mother looked up toward the rooms where Papa had gone a few minutes ago, in case he needed her. Then she said, Do you remember when Ma died?
He looked vacantly at her, nodded. Father took me to the pyre when he lighted the fire. Her soul has flown away, he said, it’s only the empty body. She’ll come back in a new body. I rather preferred the old body. How would I recognize the new one, I used to ask him.
I remember, she said. I had to be with you even as I knew she was in pain and dying, and her sisters had gathered around…
After a pause, my mother looked at him and said quickly, Mahesh Bhaiya, why didn’t you make up with him—poor Father—
He was the one who cast me out! He arrested me, his own son, he put me in prison!
Not you alone, and that was his job.
Fine job. Working for the British. And there was that other thing too, in 1946, after the world war.
That was also his job.
He was a traitor.
Don’t say that, Mahesh! It was his job, his duty. He was a police inspector. If he had not kept the law—
If who had not kept the law? Papa said, walking in, having just had a wash, smelling of hair oil. He pulled me gently by the ear from where I sat, at the door, looking outside at the road, and said, My spy will tell me, won’t you?
Meanwhile Mother pretended the tears were not glistening in her eyes and gave us all a smile.
Grandfather Verma a traitor! Mahesh Uncle in jail! Now that was food for the imagination…but that life was far away in India and in the past. My life was so ordinary!
There was a framed photo of Grandfather Verma, from the chest up, on one of the walls in the house. He seemed to be in some kind of uniform, police I assumed; he had a large forehead and a thin moustache, and there was a trace of a smile on his lips. He looked rather like the police superintendents of the Indian movies of the fifties and sixties, someone who could have been the movie idol Dev Anand’s superior officer. He sent us cards for Diwali and New Year, with little notes that began, How are you, my little ones? And we in turn wrote short letters to him guided by Mother. After that overheard partial revelation from Mahesh Uncle, I looked upon the photo of Grandfather Verma with some respect. He was my past and there was a mystery about him, which I would find out as I grew up, when the time came for me to know.
I remember another ritual of my father’s. It was a frightening one, performed once or twice a month, late on a Sunday night. Very suddenly, a little after nine o’clock just as the news ended, as if at a whim he would go over to the front door, pull aside the drape on it, and stare outside for a minute or so. By this time Mother would be extremely nervous. Slowly Papa