Maliha - Part 3

Maliha moved aside the floral cotton bedsheet covering her body, left her bed, took three stumbling steps and walked into the door of her room. ‘Ouch!’ she wailed, stepped back, opened the door and walked through it. She could see Baba in the kitchen across the verandha.

‘Who closed the door to my room Baba?’ she asked. Usually she would slur soon after waking up but the bang had promptly restored her senses.

‘Oh, so that was the sound of Queen Victoria banging into the door’ Baba said laughing.

‘You closed it?’

‘Apparently yes, since there is no jinnat in the house.’

‘Why Baba?’

‘There were monkeys, two of them roaming in the terrace boundary wall when I woke up. You were fast asleep and thought it better than to let you wake up in a monkey’s charming company. Did you miss fajr today? I couldn't even wake up.’

‘Yes Baba. When I woke up, the sun was already up so I curled up again.’

Maliha looked up and a monkey, just a kid, sitting on the inner boundary of her terrace, poked his tongue at her. Maliha returned the gesture, and the monkey jumped over to the other side waving his tail at Maliha as if in good bye.

‘Brush your teeth and have nashta.’ Baba said as he walked out of the kitchen with plates and settled them on the small dining table with a mild clank. It was a delicious aroma arising from the kitchen along with sounds of utensils conversing with each other in clanks and bangs that ushered Sunday mornings for Maliha. Usually she would emerge from her room at Baba’s beckoning with a book in hand.

‘What have you made today?’ Maliha asked, squeezing toothpaste on her toothbrush.

‘Egg masala and paratha.’

‘Ummm.’ Maliha expressed her approval, while vigorously brushing her teeth.

When she arrived at the table Baba had already torn the steaming hot paratha into four large chunks so that it cools down quickly. Maliha lifted a chunk carefully and blew between its layers, a steam laced with the aroma of pure ghee touched her olfactory nerves sending anticipatory waves of culinary pleasure rushing through her brain. She broke off a piece, immersed it slightly in the curry, blew on it and took it in her mouth.

How must it be to be hungry and lonely and knowing that neither food nor love is about to come way to. 

‘Baba.’

‘I know it's good but your appreciation will be reflected in the size of your partake, not in your words.’

‘No Baba I have to talk to you about something. Had been meaning to tell you yesterday but I just couldn’t.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Day before Iqra told me that her father said to Qasim that if you want to marry Maliha then marry her.’ As she said that her own voice sounded alien to her and her heart twitched and then hopped a little bit in its cage.

Baba finished the portion in his mouth then said, ‘Qasim wants to marry you?’

‘I guess it’s like he has his parents’ consent if he wants to. It came in the wake of Iqra suggesting that he might want to.’

‘What about you. You like Qasim?’

‘Sort of. I mean I don’t dislike him.’ Maliha shrugged her shoulders trying to sound nonchalant.

Baba took another bite of his heavenly food and prompted Maliha to eat. In her attempt to sound indifferent towards Qasim she had stopped eating without realising.

‘Don’t yet commit yourself emotionally to Qasim or anyone for that matter. You are too young,’ Baba said after a long pause only to follow it with another long pause.

‘Ji Baba.’ Although how can it be anyone else. Ever.

Outside their house the vegetable vendor proclaimed the virtues of his vegetables- hari-hari palak, taze laal raseeley temator, khushboodar dhanya, calling out to the housewives to patronize his thela. It was a timely intervention for the silence that had suddenly ensued between her and Baba was painfully seeping through her eardrums.

‘How are you and Chaucer getting along?’ Baba said unexpectedly and as soon as he said that Maliha good humor instantly got restored.

‘I don’t see a way of reconciliation with someone with such bad spellings and equally bad grammar.’ Maliha said and rolled her eyes.

‘So where does that leave Sheik Peru?’ asked Baba.

‘Your good friend Baba is a Jew hating bigot which makes his spellings and grammar even more unbearable.’

Baba raised his head and smiled at Maliha

‘I have brought you up well,’ Baba said with the pride and satisfaction of an artist, who, every time he looks at his favourite piece of work, one painted in his sweat and blood, realizes it’s beauty and merit all over again.

‘Seriously Baba, Medieval literature is getting on my nerves. Sometimes I almost regret opting for it.’

‘Languages are like people too- the passage of time does to languages everything it does to people. It tries to push them to extinction compelling them into a struggle for survival; it assaults them leaving them scarred for life; it forces them to grow up then grow old. And so when a language pauses and turns around to cast a longing gaze at its past it fails to recognise itself.'

‘Let’s leave language for a while and tell me what time has done to you, Baba. How has it assaulted and scarred you. I am now old enough to know all that you had kept for me all this while. Tell me about your life-your and Ammi’s life when I was not around.’

Baba looked at Maliha for a while then looked down at his plate and broke off a portion from the paratha.

‘Don’t dodge this time Baba please. Every time I asked you, you said you will tell me when I am old enough to understand these things. I am sure I am old enough now. Am I not?’

‘Sure you have grown up and quickly, in a blink it seems. I hadn’t realised until now that our lives have reached the point where fathers find themselves pitted against other contenders for their daughter’s affection.’ He said that with a smile on his lips an endearing expression in his eyes. But there was something in his tone that caused Maliha’s heart to twitch.

‘It would take a fool to compete with you for my affection.’ Maliha said, throwing herself forward and wrapping her arms around her father’s neck and letting her head hang between her arms. ‘Your food will get cold.’ Baba stroked her head when 15 seconds passed like that. She raised her head, planted a peck on her father’s cheek and unwrapped her hands from around his neck.

‘Tell me about Ammi, tell me about your childhood. How did you and Ammi get married?’ Maliha asked, straightening herself on the chair.

Maliha you won’t believe what life was like back then. A lot of us in the village were relatives of some or other degree. In our primary school every other girl and boy would have emerged from the same gene pool. With some we shared a great great grandparent, with another we shared a great grandparent. One day I pushed a boy off our school bench. He fell with a thud and went screaming to the head master. Abbu was called for the next day and I got a spanking. Not because I had pushed him off but because he turned out to be a grand uncle of mine. From that day onwards I always called him Dada jaan, much to his annoyance.’

Maliha who sat in rapt attention with her elbows resting on the dining table and her chin resting at the base of her palm shook with laughter when his father spoke the last line.

‘Dada jaan and his four siblings are settled in different cities of Canada with their families. Their parents are long dead. I found them on Orkut in 2006. Do you know what is Orkut, he is the ancestor of Facebook. Through him I was able to locate some more of our relatives living in India and abroad, some as close as Sultanpur and as far as Mumbai. When the Indian economy got liberalized in the early nineties people, especially the youngsters started migrating in throngs.’

‘When did you leave the village?’

‘First I left in 1994 to study at Jamia Millia Islamia. Then In 1999 I married your mother and your grandfather almost disinherited me so the last time I went to my village was in 1999.’

Why did Dadajan disinherit you?

There were two reasons. One that my parents had wanted me to marry a cousin and the other reason was that your mother had things about her that your grandparents, particularly your grandfather could never reconcile with. I never expected them to.

‘Was my mother from another faith?

‘No. Not that.’

‘Then?’

‘She was poor.’

‘That’s not convincing enough Baba. I knew my grandmother. She was always kind to the poor.’

‘Your mother was very poor and almost unlettered and she had no family, no background, no khandan, no ancestry to speak of. Your grandmother would have treated her with utmost kindness if she were anyone but her own daughter-in-law. You see it's one thing to be benevolent, but another matter altogether to hand over the reins of your bloodline to someone who’s stock of dna you have no way of verifying.’

‘That’s arrogance.’

‘Yes. Privileges and comfort tweak our mindsets and make us arrogant. Hardships straighten us up.’

‘How did you and Ammi meet?’

‘She was employed at the house of one of my friends; to take care of his bedridden grandmother.’ Baba lied through his teeth.

‘Was she beautiful?’

‘She was just average looking but intelligence shone through her eyes. I fell for that.’

‘If it wasn’t for that damned fire I would have known what my mother looked like.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Baba do you think your friends' family that employed her might have any pictures of her? Let’s look them up on Facebook!’ Maliha almost shouted with excitement

'They are not on FB. I checked.'

‘Come over after you are done harassing Chacha.’ Iqra called out from the terrace.

‘I am done. Coming.’

‘Baba can I go?

Iqra won’t believe that I am half Bengali.’ Maliha said as she lathered her hand and rinsed them under the tap. ‘I am going Ok?’ she said dashing towards the door. Then something occurred to her and she retraced her steps “Let me clear the table first Baba.’

‘I will clear it. You go.’

‘Should I make tea for you?’

‘I will make it.’

‘Ok don’t make for me I will have at Iqra’s’ Maliha said as she dashed towards the door.

Baba collected the plates and rinsed them under the sink. He took a towel and wiped with it first his hands and then his forehead before putting it away. This was just the beginning of March and mornings were cool and pleasant. The sweat beads on Baba’s forehead were not a result of the weather but of the guilt arising out of blatant lying. He dreaded the day Maliha should come to know the truth about her mother’s life and death. Not that there was any real need to be fearful. No one who knows the truth is alive. Baba’s sole fear was his own conscience bent upon truthfulness and liable to punish him when he erred on that front. Opposing his conscience was the fatherly compassion bent upon protecting Maliha as much from emotional distress as from physical harm. It was Maliha’s right to know the truth and it was Baba’s duty to protect her from it’s devastating implication. ‘Mine is not an enviable place to be in’ Baba observed as her placed a tea pan on the gas stove and poured a quarter cup of water in it. He lighted the stove and saw blue flames caress the pan and when the water in it came to a boil Baba deposited less than a teaspoon of tea leaves in it and watched as the leaves leached out their colour turning the water reddish brown. Lost in thoughts he allowed it to boil for a while and finally taking the lid off the milk pan he pushed back the layer of thick cream with the help of a spoon and poured about half a cup milk into the bubbling brown water. The instant the white touched the deep brown, a momentary struggle for retaing individual identities took place before they both compromised. The white took on a brownish hue and the brown gave into the demands of the white and turned lighter. Then the crystals of sugar dissolved themselves into the light brown liquid and rendered it the sweetness which along with nicotine worked magic on people’s brain. When he was small his mother treated all ailments with two remedies. One was a good oil massage and the other of course was tea. Between them the two cured all sorts of aches, gastric troubles, low blood pressure, post natal weakness, new born woes and old age qualms. There were days when Baba missed his mother sorely and now as he sat in the quiet verandha with his cup of tea and the only other sound being of occasional vendors passing by the road his mother’s memory came back rather forcefully.

She had had more than her share of grief before Baba (Jamshed) was born. Prior to Baba there had been three children, a son and a set of female twins, all born premature and having died before reaching the third day of their lives. Baba’s mother (Saba) bore her devastating losses patiently hoping for reward from Allah on the final day for her patience and unflinching submission to His will. When Jamshed was born no one expected him to live but he defied prophecy and diagnosis and survived to grow into an intelligent and healthy child. When Jamshed was four he got a baby sister but like his mother’s children before him this infant too was not destined to stay in their lives. Once again Saba submitted herself to the will of Allah and concentrated her attention and energies on Jamshed alone. The parents doted on him. The usually tough tempered father of Jamshed (Mukhtar) made an exception to his temperament when he was Jamshed’s father. Jamshed had a protected well provided childhood. He completed his secondary education in a school twenty kilometres from his village and went on to qualify for a technical course in the Jamia Millia Islamia. It was decided as per his father’s desire that he should come back and take care of family’s land once his education was completed. Jamshed agreed to his father’s wishes not because he feared him but simply because he loved him too much to negate what he knew his father truly desired. Things would have gone per plan had he not one day encountered Shakeela ( Maliha’s mother ) and felt encumbered to toss away all his plans and promises. His Nikah to Shakeela which was solemnised in presence of four people none of whom were his relatives were Jamshed’s biggest betrayal towards his parents in more than one way. For one he thrust upon them a woman they could never bring themselves to accept, secondly he snatched away from them the joy getting their only son married with pomp and thirdly he disregarded and humiliated beyond recompose his parents before the parents of the girl ( a cousin) who had been chosen to be his bride. Mukhtar as much as he wanted could not disown his son. It was forbidden in Islam and Mukhtar was fearful of inviting Allah’s displeasure at that stage of his life. But his wrath towards his son would not leave him alone so he avenged himself by distributing all but a small portion of his wealth among his siblings’ children even though with his present state of health he could have lived another twenty or forty years. He died an year later of congenial heart failure and when Jamshed came to know of his father’s wrath induced charity it wasn’t his father he felt any resentment towards but his cousins who greedily accepted the lands when they could have very well declined them.

‘Aray Jamshed Bhai, what to say, your father was so angry, he would have given them away to any aira ghaira had we refused to take it. At least it remained in the family this way.’

With that logic they should, at least some of them should have offered to give it back to Jamshed, but such an offer never came. It wasn’t his own loss of wealth but his cousins’ greed that made him never turn back to his village. Although that was the initial reason for cutting himself from his root a more compelling reason soon presented itself when Maliha’s mother died.

After his father’s death he wanted to bring his mother to Ahmadabad where he was working at the time. No amount of pleading however could convince Saba to share the roof with the daughter in law who was the cause of such agony in her life including her husband’s untimely demise. ‘If at all my marriage is the cause of Abbu heart failure then I alone am responsible for it. Shakeela does not share that responsibility’ Jamshed said to his mother. ‘Don’t take that woman’s name in my house,’ Saba said seething with cold anger. With a heavy heart Jamshed left his mother and returned to his wife and unborn Maliha.

Maliha burst in and found Baba lost in thoughts. The tea was long finished and its tell tale signs were beginning to dry on the cup’s circular wall.

‘What are you thinking Baba?’ Maliha asked. ‘Have you been sitting here since I left? It's close to an hour!’

Baba looked at Maliha for a long time but said nothing.

‘You look disturbed Baba. Is this the Qasim thing?’

‘No. Not Qasim at all.’ Baba assured her.

‘Then you are thinking of Dadi or Ammi.’ Maliha said decidedly.

‘Yes both actually,’ Baba said, taking off his glasses and rubbing at his tired eyes with the base of his palm.

‘What about them Baba?’

‘That they were two women who loved me with all their heart and I failed them both.’

‘I know how terrible it is to yearn for the mother I never met but I am sure that missing the mother you loved and who loved you back must be far worse.’ Maliha said.

‘See the monkey is back.’ Baba said pointing to the terrace.

‘Husshh..hushh’ Maliha said way too softly and waved her hands.

‘Mohtarma with such politeness it will think you are inviting it. ’ Baba said.

‘I think I have finally become the lady my teachers had been trying to turn me into since I was four.’ Maliha said grimacing.

The money growled and left.

‘You were not polite enough.’ Baba said with mock regret.

‘Or maybe he didn’t prefer your company,’ Maliha retorted very politely.

‘Yes monkeys like to be among their own. He will come back when I am not here,’ Baba said flatly at which Maliha turned to look at Baba and roll her eyes.

Then she placed herself on an old cane chair, drew up her knees and wrapped her hands around them.

‘Baba, will you refuse me if I ask you for something?’ Maliha said, peeping from behind her own knees.

‘That I can say only after I know what you want.’ Baba said in a matter of fact tone.

‘I want to go to our village.’

‘What for?’ Baba asked, puzzled and somewhat shocked. This was totally unexpected.

‘To visit Ammi’s grave.’ Maliha said.

This was even more unexpected and Baba found himself fumbling for words.

‘That will not be possible, Maliha,’ Baba said softly but firmly.

‘Why?’

‘In such a long time her grave must have flattened and so many other graves must have come up around the place. I will not be able to locate it.’

Maliha looked thoroughly dejected.

‘I can never understand that when she passed away in Ahmadabad why did you take her mortal remains all the way to a tiny village in UP where she was not welcome when she was alive and buried her next to the person who despised her with all his might.’ Maliha said in a tone that combined question and accusation and Baba had no answer.

‘If she were in Ahmadabad your emotional stigma attached to the village would not hinder us from visiting her grave.’ Maliah said sullenly.

‘You are right. She should have been buried in Ahmadabad. I made the wrong decision in burying her in the village.’ Baba said solemnly.

‘One day I will go there on my own.’ Maliha said resolutely and Baba wondered how long he would be able to keep the truth from revealing itself to her and devastating her beyond repair. One visit to the village would rip apart the narrative assiduously spun by Baba and expose Maliha to the trauma he had been preventing her from since the last seventeen years.

‘You go to the village and see my dead face.’ Baba said. That was absolutely uncharacteristic of him. He was not one given to emotional verbosity or even to display sentimentality except when showing his love to Maliha. At such a statement thus Maliha was truly taken aback.

‘I will never go,’ Maliha said, shocked and guilty. She undid her fetal folds, rose from the old cane chair, picked up the tea cup by Baba’s side and walked into the kitchen.

‘Should I make tehri for lunch?’ Baba called out from the verandha after two or three minutes had passed.

‘I will make it,’ she said after turning on the tap hoping to drown her about to cry tone in the feverish din of water hitting the stone basin and began to rinse the cup under it.

‘Alright. I trust you not to use the opportunity to avenge yourself by using red chillies.’

Without responding Maliha selected three medium size potatoes, peeled off their skin and diced them into cubes. Then she placed a pressure cooker on the flame and lifted the bottle of refined oil to pour into the pan but just then remembered what Iqra had just told her about Qasim’s fondness for Mustard oil. She put the refined oil bottle back in its place and picked up the bottle of Kachi ghani that she had purchased at Iqra’s insistence about a month back. The seal came off as she twisted its yellow cap and Maliha realised that there was something oddly satisfying about the sound of a seal coming off. And that there was something excessively irritating about the sound of slippers rubbing against a dusty floor and that there was something just tolerably annoying about the sound of a dentist’s drill working in a tooth cavity. With wayward thought Maliha poured golden yellow oil in the pressure cooker and proceeded to slice an onion. She aimed to slice them as thin as Iqra and Qasim’s mother did so they could achieve the perfect golden colour in oil, neither a shade darker nor a shade lighter. When Iqra’s mother deep fried the onions she needn’t use a blender afterwards. Crushing them by hand would suffice to give her Qorma its golden hue. One night on the terrace when the electricity had gone off the two girls had planned the channel to the minutest detail including the number of likes and subscriptions they would get only to be vetoed by Iqra’s mother at last.

‘I won’t let strangers into my personal space.’ Iqra’s mother had said resolutely.

‘I will make the video in such a way that they will only get into your pateela and nowhere else.’

‘That’s most personal of all spaces.’

‘Hai Amma! That’s personal space of bakra, murga, lauki and alloo not you.’

‘I cook for you children. No way will I cook for strangers.’

‘You will only teach them how to cook so they can cook for their children.’

‘What will you call the channel?’ Abba asked in jest.

‘Qasim ki Amma ka bawarchi khana.’ Qasim said.

‘Qasim aur Iqra ki Amma ka Bawarchi Khana. Is she only your mother?’ protested Iqra.

‘That’s such a short name. Let’s call it Qasim aur Iqra ke Abba ki biwi ka Bawarch Khana.’

‘People might imagine Abba to be polygamous in that case.’ Rukhsana Chachi quipped in and Iqra’s mother shot her a glance.

‘Call it Qasim aur Iqra ke Abba ki eklauti biwi ka Bawarchi Khana then to shoo away any chances of confusion.’ Abba said.

‘I think I have a name of my own. No Maliha?’ She said, turning to Maliha. That moment of female camaraderie lodged in Maliha’s memory comes with renewed pride everytime Maliha thinks of it. For one it was the simplest assertion of identity by a woman bogged down by traditional roles of mother and wife and secondly it was Maliha she had chosen as her comrade in that assertion of identity.

The onions proved to be disobedient and inconsiderate. Some of the slices overdid themselves, some remained undone while those at the periphery threatened to burn themselves inedible. Maliha quickly added potato cubes to the pan followed by diced tomatoes, salt, red chilli powder and whole spices and gave them a stir.

Baba walked into the kitchen waving a bunch of green coriander leaves like a trophy. ‘Have we got tomatoes? Let me make chutney on the sil today. Come Maliha, give me some tomatoes and I will tell you how your mother used to make Dhanya temater chutney with tehri.’

Maliha silently passed on two tomatoes to Baba.

‘Not on talking terms with me haan?’ Baba said as he rinsed the tomatoes under the tap.

Maliha added pre soaked rice to the vegetables sizzling in the cooker, added water to it, checked the salt and added some more and closed the lid.

‘Going to Imam chachi’s house. Please slow down the flame after one whistle and turn it off five minutes later whistle or no whistle,’ she said in a sombre tone and walked out of the kitchen.

‘Who taught you to make tehri?’ Baba called out.

‘My father.’ Maliha replied slowly in her track.

‘Me, you mean.’ Baba said.

‘Guess I don’t have any other father.’ Maliha cast a brief glance at her father before stepping out and closing the door behind her.

The suppressed sadness in her countenance broke Baba’s heart. What would Baba not do to pluck away the slightest shadow of unhappiness shadowing his little daughter’s heart? He would do anything. Anything, except to tell her the truth. How does one tell a daughter that her mother has no grave to call her own? That she never got a decent burial. That no one knows where her remains rest.