A Sahib's Daughter (7 page)

“If I had three children, one of you would have to sit on top of me,” smiled Ramona. She hugged her tightly, happy that Samira had come to see her, sensing the child’s gradual withdrawal. But Samira did not like to be hugged or kissed for long. Ramona released her and said,

“It’s Diwali, so we have a busy day today.”

“Yay, Diwali!” Samira cried. “Will there be fireworks?”

“Of course, and sweets and lots of little lights.”

“Can I have sparklers, please, please?”

“If you’re really good.”

“I’ll be good,” promised Samira, happily.

“The doctor baboo’s coming today but not to see you, so don’t worry.”

Whenever the doctor baboo arrived to give the children vaccinations or injections, Samira would run away and hide. She would tear round and round the bungalow, and Ramona would send Ram or Didi to catch her. Kicking and screaming, Ramona, Didi and the hapless doctor would have to hold her down.

After breakfast, Ramona supervised the placing of little oil lamps along the verandah and down the front steps. Gifts of sweetmeats and dried fruit had been arriving daily from their vendors. Later in the morning, after the doctor baboo left promising to send his latest bedwetting remedy, Ramona and the children went to Mal Bazaar to buy fireworks and provisions. Mark was wearing the soldier suit Ramona had ordered for his birthday because he never stopped talking about being a soldier when he grew up. This was inspired by the military convoys during the war with China. They had to wait for the interminable military vehicles to pass and would stare apprehensively at the soldiers with their rifles sitting in the back of the trucks. Mark decided that he wanted to be one of them, a brave soldier with his own rifle.

He had his toy rifle over his shoulder and clutched his toy monkey which went everywhere with him. Samira wore her red pinafore frock with little blue boats on it. She liked it because the front had a big pocket with slots for each hand. Her hair flowed down her back with the weight and luster of Ramona’s black tresses. At school, her hair was tightly braided each day by the school ayahs. If she wriggled or fidgeted, they would smack her across the back of her head till her eyes welled with tears, but she never told anyone. All the little girls suffered the same fate.

Kala parked the car beside a row of shops in Mal Bazaar. It wasn’t much of a town, just a smattering of makeshift buildings and a petrol station that had sprung up beside the thoroughfare. Trucks and buses sped past, blasting their horns at the disorderly cyclists and pedestrians who were oblivious to any sense of urgency. As soon as the old Ford V8 was parked, it was accosted by peddlers and beggars. Although initially appalled and dismayed by the sight of them, Ramona and the children had grown inured to the beggars’ disfigurements, tossing coins into their tin cups. Peddlers thrust cheap plastic playthings, water balloons, grotesque dolls, flutes and rubber bouncing balls under their noses. Sometimes, Ramona would humor the children with the purchase of some shoddy toy that would be in pieces within the hour.

Decrepit cows with protruding ribs scrounged scraps discarded by the roadside tea shops and vegetable stalls. Mangy pariah dogs scuffled and scratched in the dusty laneways. It was almost as though all the business of the day was conducted on the streets and sidewalks. A dentist set up his practice, cross-legged on a coir mat, subjecting his patients to an assortment of instruments with little regard for hygiene or the pain he was inflicting. Hunkered close by was a man selling knives displayed on a piece of fabric with his sharpening tools beside them.

The children paused to watch, enthralled, a monkey man with his distinctive rattling drum and cast of three monkeys, a mother, father and baby. The monkeys danced and performed a hilarious wedding ceremony where the female in a red veil pursued the male with her baby in tow. Mark giggled as the monkeys ran around collecting coins from the spectators in their tiny humanlike hands.

When they arrived at the shop where Ramona bought her dry provisions, the owner, seeing the children, announced that he had Coca-Cola. He sat cross-legged on a white, padded platform in the middle of the store, presiding over the piles of grain. There was a smell of turmeric and gunny sacks. One of the associates handed chilled bottles of Coca-Cola to the children, while another weighed Ramona’s order under her watchful eye. Samira guzzled hers down in a few seconds, gasping as the bubbles went up her nose. She watched covertly as Mark sipped at his, knowing that he could never finish the bottle.

“Tell her to stop watching me,” he whined to his mother. He knew what Samira was waiting for and was determined to finish the Coca-Cola to the last drop.

“I’m not!” Samira protested.

“There’s no hurry, darling,” said Ramona. She paid for the food, and the packages were placed in a basket in ready for the coolie to transport to the car. They all waited and watched as Mark struggled to finish as much of the Coke as he could, a brave soldier with a rifle over his shoulder and monkey under his arm. The pressure was too much for him. All pleasure in the drink dissipated and with lower lip quivering, he conceded defeat.

“I don’t like it,” he lied, feebly, holding out the bottle to his mother. What was left of the Coke was handed to Samira, who seized it triumphantly and gulped it down.

That night, the children had to wait until after dinner before Charles would allow them to play with the fireworks. The house looked beautiful with the electric lights switched off, lit only by the flickering oil lamps. Samira and Mark ran into the garden, a safe distance from the house and watched in fascination as Charles and Jetha let off Catherine wheels, fountains and rockets. They were given sparklers and tore around the garden shrieking and waving them in circles until they fizzled out.

In the distance, the laborers beat their drums, a sound that reverberated through the plantation until the early hours every night during the Diwali season. The throbbing of the drums became louder and louder until they realized it came from just outside the compound. A group of laborers stood by the gate waiting to be invited in.

“Jetha, let the coolies in,” Charles said, in Hindi.

Ramona and the children retreated up the steps to the verandah, while Charles went to greet the visitors, several men and women obviously in a state of inebriation. They had come to dance for the Sahib and his family, they said. Samira shivered in fear, seeing the whites of their eyes roll in the light of the oil lamps. The women, whose eyes were heavily lined with kohl, wore coral and gold necklets and earrings that were so heavy that their lobes were grotesquely stretched. Mark ran into the house and clung to Didi in terror.

The dancers formed three rows one behind the other with their arms around each other’s waists and chanted loudly to the beat of the drums. They ran forward with their heads facing the ground and then backwards with faces to the sky, back and forth, back and forth in a terrifying and never-ending dance. Finally, unable to take any more, Ramona signaled to Charles to make them stop.

“Shabash! Shabash!” Charles praised them, not wanting to cause offence. He presented the leader with the bottle of rum Jetha had fetched from the liquor cabinet. It was accepted joyfully, and the group made their way out of the compound, laughing and talking as they vanished into the dark.

Samira had run indoors for fear of being put on display. Sometimes, the coolies asked to look at the children up close, fascinated by their light skin and eyes.

“Can they possibly be real?” they asked each other in wonder, gazing at the children who were so different from theirs. Ramona would smile and indulge them, but Samira would pout, hating the attention, and Mark’s eyes would well up.

“They just want to look at you. They’ve never seen children like you before,” said Ramona, who identified with their curiosity. “Try to be nice.”

Samira and Mark were stealing peas in the vegetable garden. Ramona and Charles were taking their afternoon nap, and Ramchand had gone home for lunch. Didi didn’t know where they were and was too hot to care. There was nothing as delicious as fresh peas, but they were bad for their tummies, and they weren’t allowed to pick them. There were rows of cauliflower, cabbage, carrots and beetroot. The peas and tomatoes were in the back corner, supported by canes. There was also a pineapple grove, but the children didn’t like to play there because the fronds were prickly and scratched their legs.

Samira announced to Mark that she knew how to make babies. A girl in her class, Nilofer Sharma, had told her.

“You don’t!” said Mark in disbelief, although quite liking the idea of having one.

“I do so! It’s easy. She said a boy and a girl just have to rub their bottoms against each other, and they’ll have a baby.”

“But where would it come from?” he asked.

“I don’t know. It just appears like magic. That’s what she said
.
Shall we try it?”

“I don’t know.” He grew wary. “What would we do with a baby?”

“We could play with it, of course. Didi would feed it and take it out in the pram. It’ll be fun! Now stand behind me and rub your bottom against mine.”

They stood back-to-back in the vegetable garden and rubbed their bottoms together. Even to their innocent minds, there seemed to be something illicit about the business of making babies. They stepped apart and waited, looking all around.

“I don’t see one,” said Mark.

“Maybe we have to wait a little while.”

“Are you sure you got it right?” he asked, suspiciously, not knowing whether to be relieved or disappointed. “Maybe we should ask Mummy.”

“No, silly. I heard her tell Daddy she doesn’t want any more babies. Let’s come back later and check. I know! Let’s go catch tadpoles!”

They sped off to their new adventure, any thought of babies already forgotten.

Chapter 6

Dooars, 1966-1968

“Daddy, look at my report card,” Mark ran up to him, as he arrived home for lunch. “I got an A in sums.”

While there was no doubt in his mind that he loved his children, Charles, whose own father was a dim memory, and someone who’d had little or nothing to do with his offspring, had no role model to emulate in his relationship with them. He did not feel a strong connection with either child and showed a cursory interest in their activities apart from a vague sense of obligation to be something of a disciplinarian.

“Well done, son. I’ll look at it in a minute.” He was hot and tired and preferred to read the newspaper. Ramona gave him a dark look. She wanted the children to do well in school and pored over their reports with intense interest. Samira’s teacher had said that she was doing better in class but “tends to think she knows everything.” Mark’s teacher said that he needed to be more assertive and participate in class discussion.

She read fairy tales to the children, filling their minds with vivid impressions of princesses, knights and wicked stepmothers which combined to build impressions in the children’s minds that were completely unrelated to actual life. Ramona found it tedious to bathe or dress the children. Didi had always done those things except when they were babies. Prava had sent Didi to them by bus from Darjeeling shortly after Samira was born. It was Didi who took them for long walks to the river in the afternoons, pushed them on the swing in the garden and put them to bed at night. She could not read to the children but told stories about Tibetan warriors, ferocious yetis and yaks. She taught them to sing the Nepalese songs that she sang them to sleep with each night.

There was a small, shallow swimming pool in the compound of the Burra Bungalow that Greg said they were welcome to use whenever they liked. One day, Samira refused to step into the pool, seeing the reflection of the sky in it. She was somehow convinced that she would sink into the depths of the sky reflected in the pool. Didi had coaxed and cajoled her, demonstrating the shallowness of the pool by stepping in it and disturbing the reflection. But even with her feet planted firmly on the bottom, Samira had not been able to fully comprehend why she didn’t sink to the depths reflected in the water, as high as the clouds in the sky.