Veena had not come to Priya for financial help, but to ask her how best to sell the jewellery she had got from her mother upon her marriage - and to weep on her shoulder. She had brought the jewellery with her. Only a little had remained from the traumatic days after the family's flight from Lahore. Every piece meant so much to her that she started crying when she thought of losing it. She had only two requests - that her husband not find out until the jewellery had actually been sold; and that for a few weeks at least her father and mother should not know.
They talked quickly, because there was no privacy in the house, and at any moment anyone could walk into Priya's room.
'My father's here,' Priya said. 'Downstairs, talking politics.'
'We will always be friends, no matter what,' said Veena suddenly, and started crying again.
Priya hugged her friend, told her to have courage, and suggested a brisk walk on the roof.
'What, in this heat, are you mad?' asked Veena.
'Why not? It's either heat-stroke or interruption by my mother-in-law - and I know which I'd prefer.'
'I'm scared of your monkeys,' said Veena as a second
3*9line of defence. 'First they fight on the roof of the daal factory, then they leap over onto your roof. Shahi Darvaza should be renamed Hanuman Dwar.' »
'You're not scared of anything. I don't believe you,' said Priya. 'In fact, I envy you. You can walk over by yourself any time. Look at me. And look at these bars on the balcony. The monkeys can't come in, and I can't go out.'
'Ah,' said Veena, 'you shouldn't envy me.'
They were silent for a while.
'How is Bhaskar?' asked Priya.
Veena's plump face lit up in a smile, rather a sad one. 'He's very well - as well as your pair, anyway. He insisted on coming along. At the moment they are all playing cricket in the square downstairs. The pipal tree doesn't
seem to bother them I wish for your sake, Priya, that
you had a brother or sister,' Veena added suddenly, thinking of her own childhood.
The two friends went to the balcony and looked down through the wrought-iron grille. Their three children, together with two others, were playing cricket in the small square. Priya's ten-year-old daughter was by far the best of them. She was a fair bowler and a fine batsman. She usually managed to avoid the pipal tree, which gave the otheis endless trouble.
'Why don't you stay for lunch?' asked Priya.
'I can't,' said Veena, thinking of Kedarnath and her mother-in-law, who would be expecting her. 'Tomorrow perhaps.'
'Tomorrow then.'
Veena left the bag of jewellery with Priya, who locked it up in a steel almirah. As she stood by the cupboard Veena said : 'You're putting on weight.'
'I've always been fat,' said Priya, 'and because I do nothing but sit here all day like a caged bird, I've grown fatter.'
'You're not fat and you never have been,' said her friend. 'And since when have you stopped pacing on the roof?'
330'I haven't,' said Priya, 'but one day I'm going to throw myself off it.'
'Now if you talk like that I'm going to leave at once,' said Veena and made to go.
'No, don't go. Seeing you has cheered me up,' said Priya. 'I hope you have lots of bad fortune. Then you'll come running to me all the time. If it hadn't been for Partition you'd never have come back to Brahmpur.'
Veena laughed.
'Come on, let's go to the roof,' continued Priya. 'I really can't talk freely to you here. People are always coming in and listening from the balcony. I hate it here, I'm so unhappy, if I don't tell you I'll burst.' She laughed, and pulled Veena to her feet. 'I'll tell Bablu to get us something cold to prevent heat-stroke.'
Bablu was the weird fifty-year-old servant who had come to the family as a child and had grown more eccentric with each passing year. Lately he had taken to eating everyone's medicines.
When they got to the roof, they sat in the shade of the water-tank and started laughing like schoolgirls.
'We should live next to each other,' said Priya, shaking out her jet black hair, which she had washed and oiled that morning. 'Then, even if I throw myself off my roof, I'll fall onto yours.'
'It would be awful if we lived next to each other,' said Veena, laughing. 'The witch and the scarecrow would get together every afternoon and complain about their daughters-in-law. “O, she's bewitched my son, they play chaupar on the roof all the time, she'll make him as dark as soot. And she sings on the roof so shamelessly to the whole neighbourhood. And she deliberately prepares rich food so that I fill up with gas. One day I'll explode and she'll dance over my bones.” '
Priya giggled. 'No,' she said, 'it'll be fine. The two kitchens will face each other, and the vegetables can join us in complaining about our oppression. “O, friend Potato, the khatri scarecrow is boiling me. Tell everyone I died miserably. Farewell, farewell, never forget me.”
“O friend
331Pumpkin, the bania witch has spared me for only another two days. I'll weep for you but I won't be able to attend your chautha. Forgive me, forgive me.” ' ,
Veena's laughter bubbled out again. 'Actually, I feel quite sorry for my scarecrow,' she said. 'She had a hard time during Partition. But she was quite horrible to me even in Lahore, even after Bhaskar was born. When she sees I'm not miserable she becomes even more miserable. When we become mothers-in-law, Priya, we'll feed our daughters-in-law ghee and sugar every day.'
'I certainly don't feel sorry for my witch,' said Priya disgustedly. 'And I shall certainly bully my daughter-inlaw from morning till night until I've completely crushed her spirit. Women look much more beautiful when they're unhappy, don't you think?' She shook her thick black hair from side to side and glared at the stairs. 'This is a vile house,' she added. 'I'd much rather be a monkey and fight on the roof of the daal factory than a daughter-in-law in the Rai Bahadur's house. I'd run to the market and steal bananas. I'd fight the dogs, I'd snap at the bats. I'd go to Tarbuz ka Bazaar and pinch the bottoms of all the pretty prostitutes. I'd … do you know what the monkeys did here the other day?'
'No,' said Veena. 'Tell me.'
'I was just going to. Bablu, who is getting crazier by the minute, placed the Rai Bahadur's alarm clocks on the ledge. Well, the next thing we saw was three monkeys in the pipal tree, examining them, saying, “Mmmmmmm”, “Mmmmmmmm”, in a high-pitched voice, as if to say, “Well? We have your clocks. What now?” The witch went out. We didn't have the little packets of wheat which we usually bribe them with, so she took some musammis and bananas and carrots and tried to tempt them down, saying, “Here, here, come, beautiful ones, come, come, I swear by
Hanuman I'll give you lovely things to eat “ And they
came down all right, one by one they came down, very cautiously, each with a clock tucked beneath his arm. Then they began to eat the food, first with one hand, like this - then, putting the clocks down, with both hands.
332-Well - no sooner were all three clocks on the ground than the witch took a stick which she had hidden behind her back and threatened their lives with it - using such filthy language that I was forced to admire her. The carrot and the stick, don't they say in English? So the story has a happy ending. But the monkeys of Shahi Darvaza are very smart. They know what they can hold up to ransom, and what they can't.'
Bablu had come up the stairs, gripping with four dirty fingers of one hand four glasses of cold nimbu pani filled almost to the brim. 'Here!' he said, setting them down. 'Drink! If you sit in the sun like this, you'll catch pneumonia.' Then he disappeared.
'The same as ever?' asked Veena.
'The same, but even more so,' said Priya. 'Nothing changes. The only comforting constant here is that Vakil Sahib snores as loudly as ever. Sometimes at night when the bed vibrates, I think he'll disappear, and all that will be left for me to weep over will be his snore. But I can't tell you some of the things that go on in this house,' she added darkly. 'You're lucky you don't have much money. What people will do for money, Veena, I can't tell you. And what does it go into? Not into education or art or music or literature - no, it all goes into jewellery. And the women of the house have to wear ten tons of it on their necks at every wedding. And you should see them all sizing each other up. Oh, Veena -' she said, suddenly realizing her insensitivity, 'I have a habit of blabbering. Tell me to be quiet.'
'No, no, I'm enjoying it,' said Veena. 'But tell me, when the jeweller comes to your house next time will you be able to get an estimate? For the small pieces - and, well, especially for my navratan? Will you be able to get a few minutes with him alone so that your mother-in-law doesn't come to know? If I had to go to a jeweller myself I'd certainly be cheated. But you know all about these things.'
Priya nodded. 'I'll try,' she said. The navratan was a lovely piece; she had last seen it round Veena's neck at Pran and Savita's wedding. It consisted of an arc of nine
333square gold compartments, each the setting of a different precious stone, with delicate enamel work at the sides and even on the back, where it could not be seen. Topaz, white ' sapphire, emerald, blue sapphire, ruby, diamond, pearl, catseye and coral: instead of looking cluttered and disordered, the heavy necklace had a wonderful combination of traditional solidity and charm. For Veena it had more than that: of all her mother's gifts it was the one she loved most.
'I think our fathers are mad to dislike each other so much,' said Priya out of the blue. 'Who cares who the next Chief Minister of Purva Pradesh will be?'
Veena nodded as she sipped Jier nimbu pani.
'What news of Maan?' asked Priya.
They gossiped on : Maan and Saeeda Bai ; the Nawab Sahib's daughter and whether her situation in purdah was worse than Priya's ; Savita's pregnancy ; even, at secondhand, Mrs Rupa Mehra, and how she was trying to corrupt her samdhins by teaching them rummy.
They had forgotten about the world. But suddenly Bablu's large head and rounded shoulders appeared at the top of the stairs. 'Oh my God,' said Priya with a start. 'My duties in the kitchen - since I've been talking to you, they've gone straight out of my head. My mother-in-law must have finished her stupid rigmarole of cooking her own food in a wet dhoti after her bath, and she's yelling for me. I've got to run. She does it for purity, so she says though she doesn't mind that we have cockroaches the size of buffaloes running around all over the house, and rats that bite off your hair at night if you don't wash the oil off. Oh, do stay for lunch, Veena, I never get to see you!'
'I really can't,' said Veena. 'The Sleeper likes his food just so. And so does the Snorer, I'm sure.'
'Oh, he's not so particular,' said Priya, frowning. 'He puts up with all my nonsense. But I can't go out, I can't go out, I can't go out anywhere except for weddings and the odd trip to the temple or a religious fair and you know what I think of those. If he wasn't so good, I would go completely mad. Wife-beating is something of a common
334sport in our neighbourhood, you aren't considered much of a man if you don't slap your wife around a couple of times, but Ram Vilas wouldn't even beat a drum at Dussehra. And he's so respectful to the witch it makes me sick, though she's only his stepmother. They say he's so nice to witnesses that they tell him the truth - even though they're in court! Well, if you can't stay, you must come tomorrow. Promise me again.'
Veena promised, and the two friends went down to the room on the top floor. Priya's daughter and son were sitting on the bed, and they informed Veena that Bhaskar had gone back home.
'What? By himself?' said Veena anxiously.
'He's nine years old, and it's five minutes away,' said the boy.
'Shh!' said Priya. 'Speak properly to your elders.'
'I'd better go at once,' said Veena.
On the way down, Veena met L.N. Agarwal coming up. The stairs were narrow and steep. She pressed herself against the wall and said namasté. He acknowledged the greeting with a 'Jeeti raho, bed', and went up.
But though he had addressed her as 'daughter', Veena felt that he had been reminded the instant he saw her of the ministerial rival whose daughter she really was.
5.6
'is the Government aware that the Brahmpur Police made a lathi charge on the members of the jatav community last week when they demonstrated in front of the Govind Shoe Mart?'
The Minister for Home Affairs, Shri L.N. Agarwal, got to his feet.
'There was no lathi charge,' he replied.
'Mild lathi charge, if you like. Is the Government aware of the incident I am referring to?'
The Home Minister looked across the well of the great circular chamber, and stated calmly :
335'There was no lathi charge in the usual sense. The police were forced to use light canes, one inch thick, when the unruly crowd had stoned and manhandled several members of the public and one policeman, and when it was apparent that the safety of the Govind Shoe Mart, and of the public, and of the policemen themselves was seriously threatened.'
