Krishna explained seriously, ‘The thing is that boys wants to play around and girls want to settle down.’
Gurtu complained, ‘What do boys get out of marriage anyway? They might suffer under the yoke of marriage, but also feel good about being the lord and master. They can do what they want, who stops them? Girls do indeed gain prestige and a licence of respectability from marriage. But a woman’s womb is her greatest curse.’
Surendra suggested, ‘There should be marriage but no children.’
‘And remain an object of ridicule for your entire life?’ said Amrita. ‘People would call you infertile.’
‘Oh my, that’s even worse!’ Sneha exclaimed.
Surendra said, ‘Come on, what’s all this talk? As if love and companionship for life mean nothing!’
‘What kind of love is that?’ Gurtu objected, glancing towards Amrita, ‘Your parents said: Love this boy! As soon as you had permission, or got an order, you fell in love!’
Surendra said, ‘I’ll never act like that. I’ll choose my companion all by myself.’
Tara agreed with her. Surendra continued, ‘The real thing is falling in love. When you’ve got married, you’re bound for life!’
Amrita said, ‘Love hardly ever happens in any special way! Love just happens.’
Tara faced the very problem only one week later.
When Sheelo and Tara came out of the Shahalami Gate, they walked through the walled garden towards the Lohari Gate.
‘Look at that boy up ahead. The one in the silk suit, he’s looking in our direction!’ Sheelo said, pressing Tara’s arm.
After one glance, Tara couldn’t look at him again; she had to lower her eyes. She didn’t like the way the boy was rudely staring at her.
Tara studied alongside boys in the college. She had seen good boys and
bad boys. Among themselves, Tara and her girlfriends called the kind of boy who stared ‘stupid’, ‘rude’ and ‘girl gazers’. Such boys disgusted them and they made fun of them. They avoided the ‘girl gazer’ kind of boys, such as Avinash, one of the BA students. If he saw some girl standing alone, he would approach her and ask very quietly, ‘It’s the—th of this month today, isn’t it?’ This was a trick to make other guys believe that the guy was very friendly with that girl. Tara liked the spontaneous and easy manner of some boys, like the ones who participated in college societies, debates and the Student Federation; like Asad bhai saheb, the MA student at the Christian College—direct, spontaneous, friendly and respectful.
Though Tara had said several times at home, in front of her mother, ‘I won’t get married. I’m going to keep on studying up to MA level,’ nobody paid her any attention. Nobody even asked her about it. One day she heard that her mother had gone to the Banni Hata mohalla and had given eleven rupees to a family as a goodwill token for her daughter’s engagement with some boy. That day Tara had wept all day, especially when no one was around. She thought, it couldn’t have happened if my brother was here. She would have been able to explain to him somehow; her brother could not agree to an engagement that was against her wishes.
When Tara had been admitted to Dayal Singh College she thought she would only make friends with girls, but at the beginning of her second year, her opinion and behaviour changed. She enjoyed the company of Surendra, Zubeida, Sneha, Gurtu and other girls in the college who took part in political meetings and the Student Federation. These girls would neither shy away from boys nor avoid them.
Surendra Kaur had become Tara’s closest friend. Surendra’s brother Narendra Singh had been Jaidev’s classmate. He had passed his MA and was studying in the Law College. Narendra Singh was one of the leaders of the Student Federation. Surendra took a very active role in the Federation’s work. Tara also began to attend those meetings in the company of Surendra. In the meetings they discussed the international implications of the Second World War. The invasions by Germany and Japan were described as Fascist invasions. India’s interest, it was explained, lay in the victory of America and Britain and the defeat of Fascism, of Germany and Japan, under Russia’s leadership. They discussed ways to fight the invasion of India by Japan so that the leaders of the Indian nationalist movement could lead the war against Fascism. Whether or not Tara understood anything, she liked their company.
Dayal Singh College subscribed to the Brahmo Samaj ideology. The college professors did not favour sectarian ideas, social conservatism or fanaticism. They advocated tolerance and acceptance of all human beings, and held that God was one and the same in all different religions. The last day of the term in the first year, before the summer vacation began, had left an indelible impression on Tara’s mind. The college had organized a picnic at the Tomb of Jehangir, where Hindu, Muslim and Sikh students sat together taking food from each other’s hands, and some had even eaten from the same leaf plates. Tara felt a thrill of pleasure in these efforts that pushed differences aside and created a sense of unity.
Tara was attracted to members of the Federation, and to those who were called Communists, for the very reasons they were criticized by society. These people were notorious for ignoring religious differences and social conservatism. In their debates they were always in favour of equality of rights between men and women, and for self-determination inside the bonds of marriage. In their company, Tara, like her brother, also began to argue against outdated conventions. She felt encouraged when her arguments and her quickness of mind were appreciated.
Tara had tolerated Masterji’s discipline and religious beliefs since childhood. Masterji forced her and her elder brother Jaidev to get up every morning at the crack of dawn and bathe. He would have them come and sit near him and sing morning and evening bhajans. He had the same kind of rules concerning dressing and other forms of conduct. Jaidev had to have the hair on his head cut short with clippers, and to wear a coat that buttoned up to the neck. After he’d gone to college, Jaidev broke free of these rules. Tara had been ordered to wear her hair in a single braid. She had to keep her head covered when she went outside the house. She wanted to wear a fitted kameez that showed her waist, a shalwar that was wide at the ankles, and cover her head with a dupatta of gossamer-fine cloth, but she was made to wear a loose, shapeless kameez and a shalwar that tapered at the ankles, and she was given a dupatta made of thick cloth. Everybody else in the gali always sang film songs and ghazals, but in Masterji’s house that was forbidden. However, after Tara enrolled in college, family control over her was relaxed as well.
Sometimes Tara thought that her father’s discipline and rules were too stringent, but then she worried that her own inclinations might be sinful, and she would check her thoughts. In the company of her classmates and
friends in the Federation she came to understand that she didn’t have to feel guilty about her preferences and tastes. She began to acquire a sense of self-respect. Sometimes she sat in restaurants with Zubeida, Asad or Zuber, and felt the satisfaction of freedom from meaningless conventions, because she was eating and drinking in the company of a Muslim. Conversing without embarrassment or walking with one of the boys in the group, she had a feeling of equality and self-confidence. But in her gali, Tara continued to behave as before, out of deference to her father and the neighbours. In college, that kind of behaviour seemed ludicrous.
JAIDEV PURI WAS IN THE SECOND YEAR OF HIS MA IN 1943 WHEN HE WAS
arrested and sent to prison for taking part in the anti-war movement. He was distraught at the thought of not being able to help his family face the hardships of wartime, but he could not let pass this sacrifice for the freedom of his country. He was convinced that he would soon gain his freedom in a free India, where his troubles would also end along with the woes of the motherland.
Puri made good use of the time spent in Multan Jail. Before his imprisonment, his ambition had been to apply for the position of a lecturer in some college after passing the MA exam with first division, and to earn a name as a writer. His literary talent had impressed his friends. In his student days, he had published essays, full of sentimental pathos, and some short stories in several magazines in Lahore. While other political prisoners spent time massaging themselves with oil and cooking food smuggled into the prison, Puri read and wrote. He would read his own writings with a critical eye, and rewrite them. In the close to two years he spent in the prison, he had finished a collection of short stories after rewriting and polishing them several times. This work, he hoped, would help launch his literary career.
Puri was released from prison in the second week of May 1945. An irony of fate, his freedom was not due to the success of the August 1942 revolution in India and the ouster of British rulers, but in celebration of the victory of Britain and its allies in the Second World War. Even with the country still under the British yoke, Puri was happy and relieved to be out of prison.
Though he had missed his family and worried about them, he had few worries of his own in the prison. Food and clothing were not all that great, but they were provided free. Political prisoners did not suffer any shortages of food or clothing. But on his return he found that the family’s circumstances had changed in his absence.
Puri had been back home for three days when his mother said to him, with some hesitation, ‘Your father has to do some tutoring after school. I can’t stand in the queue at the ration shop with the baby in my arms. Can’t
ask Tara; there are all sorts of people in that crowd. Usha too has grown up. Can you get a rupee’s worth of sugar? The bazaar rate is a rupee and a half for a seer.’
To stand in that queue for nearly two hours was tormenting for Puri. He, who was ready to make any sacrifice for his country, had to struggle for a rupee’s worth of sugar; but there was no way out. The war was over, but prices kept on rising. Cloth prices were no different. Masterji was still making do with the same old striped cloth jacket that he had when Puri was sent to prison. Shalwars that his mother, Usha and Tara wore had been patched and mended repeatedly. His mother and sisters cared for their street clothes more than they cared for their skin. Puri could see that the blue striped khaki trousers his younger brother wore had once belonged to the neighbour’s son. When Ratan grew out of them, his mother had quietly given them to Bhagwanti.
The ration allotment was for eleven yards of cloth per person every three months. Wheat was two-and-a-half seers per rupee. It could be had at three-and-a-half seers for a rupee at the ration shop, but that meant an hour and a half of standing in the queue. Memories of twenty seers of wheat and one seer of ghee for a rupee only eight years before seemed like details of history from the time of the Mughal emperor Akbar.
Postal worker Birumal’s mother was going through the gali below Puri’s house one morning with half a lauki in her hand when Bhagwanti called out to her from her window, ‘Sister, how much did that cost you?’
Jaidev could hear the craving in his mother’s voice. Birumal’s mother replied, ‘Six annas a seer, sister. Six paisas for a seer used to be too much for this lowly gourd. Sister, we have been cooking daal every day for such a long time. Felt like having a vegetable for a change.’
Jaidev remembered a woman from a nearby village hawking her produce the previous evening in the gali, ‘Ghee for sale! Home-made ghee from our own buffalo.’
Several gali women asked the price, but who could buy ghee at four rupees a seer?
The woman was annoyed, ‘You just ask the price, no one buys anything. I used to sell as much as ten seers of ghee in these galis. What kind of people live here now!’
Sardar Khushal Singh’s wife, Kartaro, said from her window, ‘The ghee-eating days are over. Now one has to buy small amounts of ghee only when
the doctor prescribes it. The smell of ghee is enough for us now, sister.’
Jaidev knew that families of Birumal, the insurance company clerk Tikaram, and Khushal Singh were facing hard times. Only two days before, Tikaram’s wife had been asking Tara to sew pajama trousers for her young boy out of her husband’s old and torn pair. Khushal Singh was fond of starched turbans of fine coloured muslin; his turban was now mostly in tatters.
The worst of the lot was the old Brahmin woman Purandei. This poor illiterate widow worked as a chaperone for girl students of the Aryaputri Pathshala in Sheesha Moti Bazaar. Both her father’s and her husband’s families were well-to-do. But after she became a widow, her husband’s elder brother took over her side of the house and threw her out. She moved to Lahore from her hometown because she felt ashamed to work for a living in the midst of her community. Her daughter Sita, almost a young woman at fifteen, was in the eighth grade at school. The enlightened, socially responsible management of the school, even in those hard times, paid Purandei only twenty rupees a month. She could, if she had to, eat just dry bread in her house, but she needed clothes to cover herself, and more so her young daughter.
Doctor Prabhu Dayal’s wife Pushpa said to Bhagwanti one day when they were alone, ‘I am not very friendly with Purandei and Sita. I’m new to this gali, and they won’t be comfortable with me. The shalwar Sita had on was so torn that she was crying over it. She couldn’t go to school today for that reason. I have a shalwar that I’ve worn only twice, it is of a good material. It doesn’t fit me any more, but it will fit her. Don’t tell her it’s from me, no one will know. That girl is pretty. If a match is found for her, the poor widow will have one less worry.’
A narrower gali branched off towards the Mochi Darwaza bazaar from Bhola Pandhe’s Gali. Mostly Muslim railway workers and artisans lived there. Passing through it, Jaidev noticed that none of the cheap sacking curtains covering the entrances to the rooms was intact. The kurtas, shalwars and lungis worn by men would invariably be torn and soiled; the chadars and burkas of the women even more so.
Only the family of Babu Govindram, head clerk at the Public Works Department, who shared the dwelling with Jaidev’s family, was better off than before. Ratan’s mother was sporting new gold bangles. Their house had a new electric fan.
Bajaj Dewanchand would sit on the chabutara below and comment, ‘Grass is sprouting on barren rocks in this time of war. He who never earned a paisa, too has made a tidy sum.’ Ghasita Ram, the iron dealer, had bought off the crumbling dwelling of a family of gujjars, milk sellers, next to his house, and had begun to construct a new one over it. Rumour had it that Babu Ramjwaya was thinking of buying another small house in the Sareen Mohalla.
Khushal Singh would throw a curse at everyone, ‘All these blackmarket-wallahs sleep with their own mothers!’
Besides teaching at the school, Masterji had always been a tutor at the mansion of Seth Gopal Shah. Sometimes he took on another pupil. Now even though he had three, sometimes four, pupils for tuition, the family was barely scraping by. The increasingly pale and withered faces of Bhagwanti and Masterji betrayed the strain of feeding the family. Tara’s constant sulking was also adding to the household’s tension.
The Intermediate exam was over and Tara had passed with a first division. Masterji was not willing to let her study for her BA. He thought: Jaidev would resume his MA studies after he was free, his other son and daughter were also attending school. How much could he afford? Education was a more noble pursuit than making money, but without money education could not be had.
Jaidev’s family had never had money. He had spent his months of imprisonment buoyed up by pride in his sacrifice, dreaming of making good solely on his talent once he was out. On his return from the prison, he found the hardships at home appalling. He told his father that he would not go back to college.
He did not have much use for the master’s degree. After being incarcerated by the British for his political beliefs, he found it humiliating to ask the government for a job. There was no hope of a government job anyway. He decided to find employment with a newspaper.
Jaidev had received the news of Tara’s engagement while in prison. Sheelo had also told the family that Somraj, Tara’s fiancé, had dropped out of his BA exam. Tara would withdraw into herself every time there was any mention of her engagement and weep silently. Bhagwanti and Masterji thought that if Tara’s fiancé was not going to get a BA degree, it wouldn’t be proper for her to get one either.
Jaidev knew a bit about Somraj Sahni, a student of the Sanatan Dharma
College, and considered this engagement unfair to Tara. To correct this injustice meted out to his sister, he decided to get her admitted into the first year of the BA course. It was neither fair nor Jaidev’s wish to burden Masterji with this extra expense. He was confident that he would be able to earn enough in the future, but the college fee had to be deposited soon. He went to his former classmate Kalicharan Kaul to borrow money. Kaul was a kind soul, an industrious and bright student who’d always done well in his studies. Jaidev had hoped that he had found a good job after earning his MA degree.
Jaidev found Kaul in a dejected state. He had applied for a number of jobs in the past nine months. He had letters of recommendation from well-known people such as Doctor Radhey Behari, Seth Gopal Shah, Barrister Chawla, and Raibahadur Dinanath, but nothing worked.
Kaul was bitter, ‘There’s no employment for us in this Unionist ministry. Muslims and Jats, even if they have third-division BAs, have no problem finding jobs; a Hindu, even with an MA first division, has no chance.’ Other friends had similar stories of economic hardship for Jaidev.
Jaidev had always heard his father praise Pran Nath, PhD. Masterji mentioned, always with a certain pride, how he had tutored the young Pran Nath for eight years. Masterji had been a tutor to the family of Seth Gopal Shah for the past twenty-five years. His salary had been eight rupees a month for the first five years; this was increased to ten rupees a month for the next five years. Now there was an increment of one rupee every year. The value of education was counted in rupees in the Seth family, but Pran Nath was not like the rest of the family.
Nath had returned to India in 1939 with a PhD in economics from Oxford University. Some of his articles had been published in the British
Economist
before his arrival. Eminent British scholars had lauded the brilliance of his work and compared his theories to those of the leading British economists. He had been appointed as a professor in Punjab University. Nath was about seven years older than Jaidev. Jaidev used to attend the doctor’s lectures in preparation for his MA examination. After war broke out, the governor of Punjab appointed Professor Pran Nath as his advisor on economic affairs. He still held that position.
Doctor Nath had the utmost respect for Masterji. Upon hearing of Jaidev’s arrest and imprisonment, he had come to visit him without caring for his position or that he was the governor’s advisor, and had implored
Masterji to come to him if he needed money for legal expenses.
With no other recourse, Jaidev went to the doctor’s house. Nath praised Jaidev’s stories in the magazines, and asked him about his time in prison. As they were talking, the Doctor reminded Jaidev, ‘Puri, do you remember; I had said that Germany’s economy would not be able to support their war effort for long…’
It was well known in the university that the Doctor had little time for the communists and their meetings, but he was influenced by Marxism and believed in radical change. He often criticized communists for being doctrinaire. After some time he asked Jaidev, ‘So, what brings you here? Something I can do for you?’
‘Doctor Saheb, I would like to borrow one hundred rupees,’ Jaidev said after some hesitation.
Nath thought for a moment. Then he took out ten ten-rupee notes from a cupboard and handed them to Jaidev. ‘Hope you’ll put them to good use.’
His meaning was clear. Jaidev had once come to the doctor in 1942 to ask for help for the underground revolutionary movement. He was not sure of the doctor’s help, but knew he would not be handed over to the police. To remove any trace of doubt from the doctor’s mind, Jaidev explained, ‘This is the fee for my sister’s admission to the BA course. Once I get paid for my writings, I shall return it.’
‘Um,’ said Nath, taking out a cigarette from the tin. ‘Your sister Tara is that old?’
‘Yes, she passed the Intermediate exam in the first division.’
‘Good. She looks bright. I saw her twice at your place. She must be given a chance to study. But why doesn’t she work to support herself? Three-month-long summer vacations have begun. Why doesn’t she work as a tutor? She will also gain some self-respect this way.’
Without waiting for Jaidev’s answer he continued, ‘Ask her to come here. I have three-and four-year-old nephews and nieces. Tara can tutor them for an hour or so during the vacations. She will have other expenses at the college. If one cannot dress and act like their friends and classmates, it often leads to an inferiority complex. That is not a good thing to happen.’
Jaidev had faced the same problem, he could not but agree.
Master Ramlubhaya was being ground between two millstones: his regular job and his tutoring work. Jaidev had not been able to find work to support himself, and this was nagging his conscience and gnawing at his self-respect.
Before going to jail, Jaidev had sometimes filled in for his father at tuitions when Masterji was tired or unwell. Masterji had taken on another pupil in the last two months. He could not say no to this extra income, even if the strain gave him headaches or made him doze off while teaching at school.