Our Favourite Indian Stories (49 page)

Taking a handkerchief from my pocket, I wiped the beer off my clothes and the cold sweat from my face. While I did this one of the hippies kissed Cinderella on the lips and caressed her belly with his left hand. Guiltily I hung my head down and began to sip the beer.

Quietly, the others slipped away leaving only Cinderella and me at the table.

'Cinderella, is this true?' I demanded, my voice hoarse.

'I win. You lose,' Cinderella replied.

'What do you mean, Cinderella?'

'The other day you left a note for me and disappeared, didn't you? But I was sure that you would return. And here you are - I win.'

I heaved a sigh of relief and asked her, 'Is it true?'

'All the angels and saints will swear to it!'

'Who is he?'

'How should I know?'

'It's not me, is it?'

'I really can't tell... But you needn't look so worried. I'm going to bring it up as my very own illegitimate child.'

'But why should the child suffer so?'

'If the father has no guts what else can be done?'

'But what about you, afterwards?'

'Me? I'll become a mother!'

'Without being married.'

'What's wrong with that? My dear man, do you know you haven't congratulated me yet?'

'Congratulations. May I leave?

'Go! But don't forget me. Come here once in a while... Or should I come to your place?

'Cinderella, I find it very difficult to say this, but please do not come to my house. Please, as a favour.'

'But you know, I didn't mean I'd come to your house for my delivery.'

'I know that. But my wife...'

'I won't say a word about what happened. I promise.'

'No, Cinderella, it's not that.... We've been married for eight years and till today she has not conceived.

Cinderella laughed. She said, 'In that case it's not yours!' and left.

Translated by
Augusto Pinto

Edwin J. F. D'Souza

The mere thought of going into the kitchen sent a chill down her spine. There was no one in the house but she really needed that glass of hot coffee. Her son would have preferred to say a "cup of hot coffee," she chuckled to herself inspite of her old bones creaking and the pit of her stomach demanding the warmth of caffeine.

A cup of hot coffee! Modern house and modern terms had to be used. It was a well-equipped kitchen. 'It's nothing Mother,' he had said. 'Just the flick of a switch and the turn of a knob.' Now she had to do it all by herself.

The rains! They had come, at last. The downpour was torrential, the sky being perpetually overcast. The air was chilly. She had known rain before but this was her first in the house her son had built. It had happened suddenly. She had found herself drawn out of her cocoon unawares.

'Mother, this is our new home,' he had said proudly. His words had choked her. Home, he had said. Why not a house? This concrete giant which came alive at the flick of a switch and turn of a knob?

Another chuckle was in order. She had glasses of coffee on an afternoon like this. Her man had been alive then. Her husband. Quite a man, quite a man. The warmth around the crackling firewood stove would be cosy. The coffee would be bubbling through a decoction of jaggery, providing the background music, and the warmth of aluminium tumblers would be in their hands. Quite a man, who had given her three sons. The first drank himself to death; the second was pulped in a bus accident. These two deaths took her man away leaving her the mud-walled house and the third son.

And then she had taken up the reins herself. She had had to. The pace was so fast that only on the day her third one came and told her he was leaving for some place in the Gulf could she stop and look around.

'No more mud-walls Mother,' he had said. 'No more milking cows, goats and rearing pigs. We are going to have a home of our dreams.' But she had never had any dreams.

And he left; the firewood stove and the mud-walled house remained with her. He had written regularly and she had sent her replies through a nun whose convent received generous charity from her son. Even the Vicar was suddenly kind to her when she had dropped a hundred rupees in the mite box. She was gaining ground!

And then came the daughter-in-law. Quite a doll. A working girl, smart and beautiful. She had twisted her lips when she had first entered the mud house. She had said, 'And once our home is up we will pull down these mud-walls and all the past with it.'

She had said nothing. She had nothing to say.

And then it had happened. A concrete giant had slowly risen next to her mud house. When the noise, dust and the hammering of steel had finally died down there had remained a brief silence only to be followed by a few more weak, floppy sounds. Her mud house no more stood there, even its dust had settled down so quickly! She saw her son standing amidst the rubble, his hands folded on his breast, looking way beyond the sky. Triumph was written all over his face. She too had looked up years ago when her husband's coffin had been lifted up on the shoulders of hired pallbearers. She had cried out in raging silence to her Creator — now, let the rest be upon me...

How she needed that coffee!

The kitchen was spotlessly clean. All she had to put together was some boiling water, a teaspoon of instant coffee, a dash of milk and sugar. She found a pan and filled it with water. It wasn't the firewood stove anymore; a shimmering, new cooking range stood in its place. And all the firepower was in that little red cylinder. She placed the pan on the cooking range and turned the knob. Hadn't he said, just the flick of a switch and the turn of a knob?

Where were the matches?

In her mud house everything was within her arms' reach. She looked around and searched for it. 'Oh damn you,' she screamed within herself, 'You and your home! You and your money! Where was it when your brothers died and your old man slowly wasted himself in grief? The bile rising in her throat choked her and she coughed briefly. There was a fishy smell in the kitchen and a faint hiss.

'Everything has a place in here' her daughter-in-law had said. 'And everything should be in its place.'

So where is the matchbox, she smiled to herself rather wickedly. Ah yes, her college-going grandchild... that chirpy, bubbly thing who was left behind with the grandmother... she had seen her puffing away to glory. She was supposed to be in her care. She wobbled her way up to her grandchild's bedroom and a brief search revealed not only the matchbox but also an ashtray filled to the brim with cigarette butts. It wasn't her concern anyway. All she needed was that coffee.

Her joints creaking, she reached the kitchen once again. What was that obnoxious smell? New homes stink too? Should she twist her lips now? Everything has its own place, the words pounded in her ears. What is my place, she heard herself ask. Did I ask for all this? The firewood stove, the three deaths and the demolition of her house loomed large in front of her. Each scene distinctly carving her descent, bringing her down to a state with which she could not compromise.

'What the hell,' she screamed, 'What the bloody hell!'

And then she struck the match.

Khushwant Singh

My grandmother, like everybody's grandmother, was an old woman. She had been old and wrinkled for the twenty years that I had known her. People said that she had once been young and pretty and had even had a husband, but that was hard to believe. My grandfather's portrait hung above the mantelpiece in the drawing room. He wore a big turban and loose-fitting clothes. His long white beard covered the best part of his chest and he looked at least a hundred years old. He did not look the sort of person who would have a wife or children. He looked as if he could only have lots and lots of grandchildren. As for my grandmother being young and pretty, the thought was almost revolting. She often told us of the games she used to play as a child. That seemed quite absurd and undignified on her part and we treated it like the tales of the prophets she used to tell us.

She had always been short and fat and slightly bent. Her face was a crisscross of wrinkles running from everywhere to everywhere. No, we were certain she had always been as we had known her. Old, so terribly old that she could not have grown older, and had stayed at the same age for twenty years. She could never have been pretty; but she was always beautiful. She hobbled about the house in spotless white with one hand resting on her waist to balance her stoop and the other telling the beads of her rosary. Her silver locks were scattered untidily over her pale, puckered face, and her lips constantly moved in inaudible prayer. Yes, she was beautiful. She was like the winter landscape in the mountains, an expanse of pure white serenity breathing peace and contentment.

My grandmother and I were good friends. My parents left me with her when they went to live in the city and we were constantly together. She used to wake me up in the morning and get me ready for school. She said her morning prayer in a monotonous sing-song while she bathed and dressed me in the hope that I would listen and get to know it by heart. I listened because I loved her voice but never bothered to learn it. Then she would fetch my wooden slate which she had already washed and plastered with yellow chalk, a tiny earthen ink pot and a reed pen, tie them all in a bundle and hand it to me. After a breakfast of a thick, stale
chapatti
with a little butter and sugar spread on it, we went to school. She carried several stale
chapattis
with her for the village dogs.

My grandmother always went to school with me because the school was attached to the temple. The priest taught us the alphabet and the morning prayer. While the children sat in rows on either side of the veranda singing the alphabet or the prayer in a chorus, my grandmother sat inside reading the scriptures. When we had both finished, we would walk back together. This time the village dogs would meet us at the temple door. They followed us to our home growling and fighting each other for the chapattis we threw to them.

When my parents were comfortably settled in the city, they sent for us. That was a turning point in our friendship. Although we shared the same room, my grandmother no longer came to school with me. I used to go to an English school in a motor bus. There were no dogs in the streets and she took to feeding sparrows in the courtyard of our city house.

As the years rolled by we saw less of each other. For some time she continued to wake me up and get me ready for school. When I came back she would ask me what the teacher had taught me. I would tell her English words and little things of western science and learning, the law of gravity, Archimedes' principle, the world being round etc. This made her unhappy. She could not help me with my lessons. She did not believe in the things they taught at the English school and was distressed that there was no teaching about God and the scriptures. One day I announced that we were being given music lessons. She was very disturbed. To her, music had lewd associations. It was the monopoly of harlots and beggars and not meant for gentle folk. She rarely talked to me after that.

When I went up to University, I was given a room of my own. The common link of friendship was snapped. My grandmother accepted her seclusion with resignation. She rarely left her spinning wheel to talk to anyone. From sunrise to sunset she sat by her wheel spinning and reciting prayers. Only in the afternoon she relaxed for a while to feed the sparrows. While she sat in the veranda breaking the bread into little bits, hundreds of little birds collected around her creating a veritable bedlam of chirrupings. Some came and perched on her legs, others on her shoulders. Some even sat on her head. She smiled but never shoo'd them away. It used to be the happiest half-hour of the day for her.

When I decided to go abroad for further studies, I was sure my grandmother would be upset. I would be away for five years, and at her age one could never tell. But my grandmother could. She was not even sentimental. She came to see me off at the railway station but did not talk or show any emotion. Her lips moved in prayer, her mind was lost in prayer. Her fingers were busy telling the beads of her rosary. Silently she kissed my forehead, and when I left I cherished the moist imprint as perhaps the last sign of physical contact between us.

But that was not so. After five years I came back home and was met by her at the station. She did not look a day older. She still had no time for words, and while she clasped me in her arms I could hear her reciting her prayer. Even on the first day of my arrival, her happiest moments were with her sparrows whom she fed longer and with frivolous rebukes.

In the evening a change came over her. She did not pray. She collected the women of the neighbourhood, got an old drum and started to sing. For several hours she thumped the sagging skins of the dilapidated drum and sang of the homecoming of warriors. We had to persuade her to stop, to avoid overstraining. That was the first time since I had known her that she did not pray.

The next morning she was taken ill. It was a mild fever and the doctor told us that it would go. But my grandmother thought differently. She told us that her end was near. She said that since only a few hours before the close of the last chapter of her life she had omitted to pray, she was not going to waste any more time talking to us.