Independent Goa Observer

CROSSROADS-III

Saqina was surely a thorn in the flesh for Nasreen. But a thorn that Jamal, her husband has slipped in so effortlessly that she was left helpless to bear the pain. Continuing Keki N. Daruwalla story from his book "The Minister for Permanent Unrest and Other Stories"

SHE TURNED bloodless. I had never seen blood desert a face like this. The cheeks took on the off-white tone of blotting paper. Her eyes were bloodshot, though. If I had my way I would have hugged Nasreen and cried. Or I would have taken a stick and bashed Jamal’s head in. Nasreen got up, rock steady, and said with extreme dignity that she didn’t belong to the house any more and was quitting, or things to that effect. They could get stuffed. She didn’t say that, but you can bet the phrase crossed her mind.

I never thought her capable of such dignity. And such courage. In two days. She chucked it all up and walked out. Back to Nizamuddin. No tears, no scenes, no shouting, nothing. Packing her things quietly. The voice normal; forced to be normal. You may have detected some strain there, some indication of effort, but I noticed none. She must have placed great store by normality. Even her appetite was the same, two scoops of rice, one roti, some dal and a vegetable. She refused to touch meat now. What is more, she carried her plate to her bedroom. Only I ate with her. Those two days I was her family.

At least tell your people, I kept coaxing her. This will come as a terrible shock. Think of them! Nasreen never got in touch with them till just three hours before the train left. She didn’t want her parents rushing over to patch things up. There was nothing left to patch up, she said.

She gave back all the jewellery to Daadi Amma, all, that is, that had been given by Jamal’s family . . . returned even the presents. She took away whatever was hers. Marriages, deaths, both end up with the carving up of estates. I’m becoming profound!

Daadi wanted her to keep the presents. Nasreen wouldn’t hear of it. Easy and matter-of-fact. No emotion, no dramatics. Everything normal. Except for a glacial look one caught by accident, and the black ice in the heart which supplied that chill to her eyes.

I said something earlier about being profound, didn’t I? Profundities don’t come easy when you have broken up a marriage. When Jamal first started hurling himself at me (metaphorically; the physical bit started later) I gave him what was coming to him.

‘You have a wife, Jamal

‘But it’s you I find attractive.’

‘One doesn’t always get what one finds attractive.’

‘I do.’

‘Not this time. And wipe that silly smile from your face.’ The trouble with Jamal was he wasn’t easily deterred. You need a lot of steel in you to repel repeated advances from someone with Jamal’s looks, his boyish face and tousled hair. I dealt with timber, wood carving, printing blocks. Not steel.

‘It isn’t two years since you married, Jamal was my constant refrain. I kept him away, though each time I looked at him I wanted to rummage through his hair. Sheathed in a silk kurta as he always was, his slender frame cried out to be hugged. I could break his ribs, I thought, if I ever put my arms around them. ‘Please God, keep him away!’ As things turned out, Jamal’s first embrace was so fierce that it was my ribs which were in danger. I had to struggle for breath. It felt great. I never brought up that just-two-years-sincematrimony routine again.

We were happy, but a small town has its restrictions. Where could one meet except at the shop? We took trips to Lucknow, Jamal driving me in his jeep. Though we were fairly uninhibited, there were of course tensions. (And I would think of her often, five and a half feet of longing all draped and covered and forgotten in wifehood.)

His constant presence at the shop was irksome, though. He would slouch around the whole day. I had work to do. I was importing printing blocks from Farrukhabad where they were used for printing designs and motifs on cloth and sarees. One day he dumped a bag on my table, and said rather loudly, ‘We are in business from now on.’

‘Haven’t we been in business for quite some time now?’ I whispered conspiratorially. He emptied his bag on the table, twenty-five thousand in currency notes. I stared at him.

‘This is sheer vulgarity.’

‘Vulgarity? And what do you think we have been up to for quite some time now?’

He actually mimicked me, the bastard!

‘Get out!’

‘Don’t be silly, Saqina. I want to join you as a partner, as your financier. I have no expertise. The least I can bring in is money. That also gives me an excuse to be around.’

‘You bastard’, I said laughing loudly, slipping obediently into his arms. A fortnight later he had told Nasreen.

‘What did you say to her?’

‘She better start working. Buy ankle-high boots so that she could supervise work on the land. She tried to be sarcastic. “What will my dear husband be doing while the wife is hoeing and harvesting?” That kind of stuff, you know. I was so furious.’

‘Is that all? I would have said “And why won’t my husband move his arse while the wife is slogging in the fields?”’

‘Wives don’t say such things.’

‘You mean mistresses can?’

He did not choose to answer. Depression set in. It worsened, when after a few minutes he resumed, ‘I was going into business, I told her. She immediately knew I was joining you.’

That soured my mood for a week. All that time I didn’t let Jamal come near me.

After a few months he started mentioning the BDO. It never registered with me. After all, I was working, touring. Somewhere the word got stuck, however, in one of those dark, hidden layers of awareness, about which you are not really aware. The next time he mentioned him I sat up.

‘What is this about the BDO? What is he to you?’

He was nothing to Jamal but he was visiting Nasreen. I laughed.

‘So bloody what?’

He gave me a hard stare. ‘The fellow is a Passi.’

So that was it. Caste consciousness and its disapproving tentacles. I’m sure that incomprehension was written all over my face, though I wouldn’t know if Jamal could read the script.

‘You don’t expect this Passi fellow to do any hanky panky, do you?’

Jamal got up and lit a cigarette.

‘Anything can happen in matters of the heart. You had been around for as long as I know. How do you explain this ... this sudden passion for you, this spell ... ?’

‘Spell?’ I was a bit bewildered.

‘The spell you cast over me. . . I speak in metaphor, of course.’

‘Of course!’

‘For two years after my wedding I resisted you, you may not know it.’

This was a revelation. He had actually shown character for two full years! ‘That’s all very fine, Jamal You give in to a whim of the loins, and call it a matter of the heart.’

Withering look. It took me a while to mollify him. Over the next few days I drew the story out of him in snatches - it was not a thing he liked to talk about - how this Passi fellow came and sat in the afternoons, on the plea of bringing in rose plants, or a coleus pot. A dozen Ashoka trees had been planted along his boundary wall! The fellow must be spending money.

‘But there are servants around.’ It was half statement, half question.

‘Yes, but that is terrible, isn’t it, the servants watching the Begum talking to a gair, an outsider.’

I had never heard him use such phrases before. Begum, outsider, they looked like words he had suddenly imported from his ancestral past. After some beating around the bush, he came back to the subject.

‘Some of these bastards disappear in the afternoon. They want their siesta, if you please! There are times when, I’m sure, there’s no one around.’

I half expected to see fire erupting from his mouth and broke into uncontrollable laughter.

‘Do you want the servants there or don’t you? Make up your mind.’

For the best part of two years I kept telling him to spend some time with her. She needed companionship. He would always nod his head and never do a thing about it. Things changed dramatically. Anything dramatic has to happen all of a sudden. I found him muttering to himself, one evening, tense and just a little haggard. ‘She went to a picture with the Passi!’ he screamed. It was a slap on his face, he said. She did it just to humiliate him! Some people look positively ugly in their anger, their facial muscles Pinched and tight, and their jawbones working away like animal muzzles. Jamal looked positively handsome in his rage. I let him rant and curse. There was little point trying to make him see reason. I had the shutters of my shop downed, saw Jamal to his car and went home.

A week later I realized that people had been cold to me of late. Kamil, a lawyer friend, gave me the brush off. My cousin Nasim. looked through me as we passed each other on the street. What was wrong? Jamal hardly made an appearance at the shop, and when he did come in, he was gone before one could corner him. I asked my shop attendant what Jamal was up to. Sahib was engaged in salah mashwara, consultations, I was told. (Trust Urdu to use two words where one would do.) Then he casually let drop, in a voice that was barely audible, that these days Jamal Mian had been busy with the maulvi. The maulvi? What on earth for? He read my thought. ‘Maybe Sahib is getting religious.’ He said this with a straight face.

The man was getting ready for divorce! I threw fits, I pleaded with him, I told him I wouldn’t see his face if he went through with this. Jamal remained stone-eyed and stone‑faced. Don’t make a fool of yourself. The whole town will laugh at you, I told him. As if it hasn’t been laughing at me while all this tamasha was going on, he said bitterly, trying to emulate some wronged thespian he had seen in some movie. Possibly Dilip Kumar.

‘I will have nothing to do with this, or with you. Understand that well, Jamal.’

He nodded, but I don’t think he ever understood. Within a few days I returned all the money that he had brought in, threw his things out and slammed the door in his face. It was him pleading now. ‘Don’t do this to me, Saqina! Not at this juncture!’ But I had done it, and I never go back on what I do.

A day later I phoned Nasreen. What’s happening? I asked. What a dissembling little bitch, she may have thought. I would have, were I in her place. All she said was ‘Why don’t you ask Jamal.’

‘I can’t. I’ve thrown him out.’

During those depressing weeks, I was with Nasreen every evening. I did all the talking, waiting in vain for some confidences from her side to sideslip into the conversation. She never really opened up, as if all that was personal and really intimate about her had been caught in a rat trap, forgotten in some dusty, cobwebbed corner of a locked godown.

(To be continued)

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