And the World Changed (13 page)

Muneeza Shamsie (1944– ) was born in Lahore, educated in England, and has lived in Karachi for most of her life. From 1975 to 1982 she taught music and mime as a volunteer at a special-education school in Karachi. She is a founding member of The Kidney Centre, a Karachi hospital.

Shamsie is a Pakistani critic, short story writer, and the editor of three pioneering anthologies:
A Dragonfly in the Sun: An Anthology of
Pakistani Writing in English
(Oxford University Press, 1997),
Leaving Home: Towards a New Millennium: A Collection of English Prose by Pakistani Writers
(Oxford University Press, 2001), and this volume,
And The World Changed: Contemporary Stories by Pakistani Women
(Women Unlimited, 2005; The Feminist Press, 2008). She is the managing editor for a work in progress,
The Oxford Companion to the Literatures of Pakistan
and is also currently writing a critical book,
Hybrid Tapestries: The Development of a Pakistani Literature in English
(working title). Shamsie is on the editorial board for the bibliographic issue of
The Journal of Commonwealth Literature
(UK) and contributes to
Dawn
and
Newsline
(Pakistan),
The Daily Star
(Bangladesh) and
The Literary Encyclopedia
(online). She has spoken at many literary forums, and was a fellow of the 1999 Cambridge Seminar.

“Jungle Jim” is a literary rendering of Shamsie's view that the colonial construct is patriarchal, as is its emulation by South Asia's Anglicized elite. For this ruling class, English is connected to power, governing, and control, while the arts by their very nature are related to freedom of expression and are thus subversive. The conflict inherent in this becomes apparent in the portrayal of Uncle Jim. His drawings of World War I war victims, his opinions on the
shikar
, and his scandalous marriage to an Englishwoman challenge the foundations of Empire and its narratives. The plot, which cuts across three generations, also shows the tenacity with which Jo's grandmother, Nani Jaan, and her sister tie down Uncle Jim to an incompatible arranged marriage in an attempt to subvert modernity.

The tale that Jo hears at her school in England and the racist interpretation that British society gives to to the story of Uncle Jim and Frances embody the imperial stereotypes and notions of Otherness, which are integral to Jo's nightmares and her paintings.

The backdrop of the two World Wars and Partition shows the way in which the latter was inextricably linked to the former and the painful choice Indian Muslims confronted in 1947 when the division of the subcontinent led to the unforeseen division of families.

The story brings out another colonial subtext, that because all the people who lived in the British Empire, anywhere in the world, were considered British subjects, they traveled on British passports. Jo's father, who deplored independence, exercised the
option of remaining British in 1947. He assumed that because he spoke fluent English, had adopted English ways, and was a World War II veteran and an aristocrat, he and his family would be regarded as equals in Britain. The loss of their social status in London is contrasted with the family's privileged standing in Amarkot, where the one-time ruler, His Highness the Nawab of Amarkot (HH for short) is an ex-classmate, and his wife, Her Highness the Begum of Amarkot, a cousin.

• • •

I paint. That's all I do. That's all I have ever done. But no, I don't talk about my paintings much, because I don't know how to. I suppose the best I can do is to tell a story—about myself, Raynard's Wood, and Amarkot.

1. 1956

My sister Lalla and I joined Raynard's Wood School in the autumn of 1956. My father, Commander Syed Mohsin “Mo” Ali Baig, drove us down, through the narrow winding roads of Hampshire flanked by overlapping trees. Begum Sitara Ali Baig exclaimed over the autumn colors, the school grounds, and the splendid white Wyatt building. I thought she was overdoing her enthusiasm—we had been there before.

There was a hub of voices, a crush of parents, girls, suitcases, and trunks, but the moment we entered a hush fell. Everyone stared. My mother was in an emerald green coat and pale silk sari; my father, in a dark overcoat, a hat in his hand. The majority of parents were in casual tweeds, sheepskin jackets, thick sweaters, and sturdy shoes: One woman was in gumboots. We stayed close together, the four of us.

An elderly woman in a white coat—the school matron—bustled toward us. She announced in a firm, confident voice. “More new girls, Lalla-Rook and Marja-Been.” (Not surprisingly we came to be known as The Margarines.) Someone whispered, “Aren't they sweet?” Another voice said, “I wonder if they
can speak English?” I was shocked, the color rising to my ears.

At supper, in the dormitory, in the classroom, I had to answer numerous questions about myself. No, I hadn't come from a foreign country, I said. I lived in London. I had been to a day school in Kensington. I spoke English at home. I seldom ate curry. Everyone called me Jo, which was short for Majjo, which was short for Mahjabeen. My sister, Lalla Rukh was just Lalla. I was eleven. I listened to other girls talk about fathers and brothers. I chipped in: One of my uncles—called Jim—had been to Sherborne and Oxford, too, and my father to Dartmouth. “During the war Daddy was almost captured by the Japs in Singapore,” I said.

The school was haunted. I discovered this quite soon.

My newly made friends, Sarah and Lucy, said we were not allowed to talk about it because the “little ones” got really frightened. She meant the junior-most girls, to which group Lalla belonged. Mandy, who shared my bedside locker, said ghosts did not exist. But in bed, after lights, we told ghost stories. One day Cilla with the auburn hair, began: “Once upon a time, long long ago, Raynard's Wood belonged to a man with a wooden leg—”

Goosebumps ran all the way up my arm.

I knew his name: Sir Roger Allis.

“He was a bit soft in the head and didn't have any friends,” said Cilla. “He thought England shouldn't fight Germany, and the British Empire was all rubbish. He had some friends in India or Africa or somewhere. They brought home this native boy. The man didn't have anyone else to talk to. He took him in and treated him like a son. Everyone said no good would come of it.”

My heart was beating so loudly that it seemed to echo in my head. I knew she was talking about Uncle Jim.

“Well, he had a daughter called Fanny—”

The room was pitch black; not even a faint light seeped through the curtains opposite. I longed to cry out, to protest, but I couldn't.

“The next thing everyone knew was, this native and Fanny wanted to marry! Well! That woke the father up. He threw him out. She was very beautiful—quite The Deb of the Season. She got married in no time. But the native wasn't going to let go just like that. Oh, no. He began to meet her secretly. Her husband caught them. He divorced her for adultery.”

Adultery!!

Uncle Jim and Aunt Frances had committed adultery.

“She wanted to keep her children but the judge refused, quite rightly. Daddy says it was all in the papers. It was a huge scandal. Her father blamed himself, of course. He died quite soon—on October 10. Ever since, on that day, at midnight, his ghost roams the corridors with his wooden leg going thump, thump, thump. And his voice floats across crying, “Fanny! Fanny!”

I stopped breathing. Voices and gasps washed over me.

“How terrible!”

“How awful!”

“What happened to her?”

“That's the worst part. He took her away from England to some far-off country. They didn't have proper doctors there or anything and he didn't bother with her, anyway. So she caught typhoid or cholera or some local disease and died.”

I couldn't sleep.

2. 1952

Uncle Jim impinged himself on my consciousness when I was seven and Lalla was five. My parents in England were going through a difficult time financially. They left us with our maternal grandmother, Nani Jaan, for some months in India. She lived in Amarkot, an erstwhile princely state which had merged with India at Independence.

At first, Uncle Jim was merely one of our many relatives. The only difference was that he didn't fuss over us (which was both a relief and a disappointment) and nearly always spoke in English
or an awkward Anglicized Urdu. To me, he looked quite the English gentleman in his
sola topi
, tweeds, and pipe.

One morning, dressed in my new red dungarees, I perched myself on the white balustrade with my back to the lawn. Nani Jaan was attending to the household accounts, beyond the fluted arches that divided the covered verandah from the brick terrace. Her metal-rimmed glasses were angled on her pointed nose and her gray hair was tied into a neat bun. A shawl fell over her rounded shoulders. I thought she looked quite like a fairy godmother.

There was a slight winter nip in the air. I swung my feet between the curves of sunlight and shadow created by the balustrade. I breathed in the lovely, smoky smell of peasant fires. To my right, where the verandah led away from the terrace, I glimpsed Lalla in a pink smocked dress (the one I loathed and refused to wear), half-merged with the roses in the rose garden. Our nanny, An'na Bua, was helping Lalla feed the the goldfish in the lily pond. Another maidservant shuffled past with a tray full of sweet, white, fluffy
batashas
, an offering at our private mosque beyond the guava groves.

There were signs of straggly grass and damp on the walls that caused Nani Jaan to sigh and lament the changing times, but I hardly noticed. I thought Amarkot was much nicer than living in London with its black, half-bombed buildings, drizzle, and rationing.

Suddenly, there was the loud and uneven tooting of a car horn. Uncle Jim hurtled down the drive in his shining green Bentley. Dozens of servants scurried around. I was whisked off the balustrade. Nani Jaan exclaimed in Urdu, “If he has to drink, he should stay at home. He shouldn't inflict himself on decent people.”

Before I knew it Uncle Jim had maneuvered his car at an angle, pressed down the accelerator, and zoomed up all five steps, right onto the terrace! His car whirred and screeched. He drove around and around that enclosed space. He paused
to wave and shout, “I've done it! I've done it! I bet a thousand rupees that I could!” He drove his car down the steps in the most terrifying manner, swung it to the left with split-second timing, and roared off toward the tall wrought-iron gates in a crunch of gravel and a cloud of dust.

In retrospect, I realize it was a rather skilled piece of driving. I don't suppose Uncle Jim was drunk at all. I picked up the servants' gossip. What did the servants mean when they whispered that Uncle Jim's wife, Shahla
Momani
, complained that he couldn't control himself when he was “in the mood”? I asked Nani Jaan. What did this have to do with the odor of whiskey? Why did this result in the servants feeling sorry for her? And what did it mean that she was fertile and had borne three sons, while his English wife, Aunty Frances, had been barren? How were children born anyway? And was it true that after Aunty Frances died he wanted to marry my mother, not Shahla
Momani
?

Nani Jaan was not in the habit of telling children half lies. Either she told the truth or she commanded them to stop pestering her. In this particular instance she summoned all the servants, admonished them in no uncertain terms, and forbade them from discussing Uncle Jim ever again.

My interest in Uncle Jim grew.

3.

In Amarkot, Nani Jaan knew few children for Lalla and me to play with. Her friends and family had served in HH the Nawab of Amarkot's administration, but had now been replaced by minor Indian government officials. The brutalities and the exchange of populations at Partition, the exodus of Muslims to Pakistan and the influx of Hindu and Sikh refugees meant that many of her neighbors were strangers. Two of her sons had migrated to Pakistan; her third was posted in Delhi. Uncle Jim's children and HH's were away at exclusive boarding schools in the hills.

One day, Lalla and I were playing in Nani Jaan's mango groves beyond the lawn. Our plump and bosomy An'na Bua settled under a tree, cracked her knuckles and looked on. Lalla was a beautiful, blond princess caught in a wicked witch's spell; I was the gallant tawny-haired prince battling through forests with a huge sword. Leaves rustled above my head, twigs crackled under my feet as I galloped to Lalla's rescue.

Uncle Jim was taking his evening walk. He emerged from a pathway and growled, “I am a fierce and fearful tiger. I am coming to get you!” Lalla and I squealed and giggled. We ran from tree to tree. He chased us around and around until he caught us and tickled us. “Oh, if I had a daughter, what wouldn't I do for her!” he exclaimed in accented Urdu.

“Then why do you have so many sons?” Lalla asked.

“Because it is God's will,” said Uncle Jim, “unfair though God might be.”

“Jim Sahib,” exclaimed An'na Bua. “For the fear of God, never say such a thing!”

He laughed. He took our tiny hands in his large, strong ones and allowed us to lead him through the mango grove. We emerged by a field. A bullock was chomping grass beside a rusty well. A peasant woman in bright swirling robes collected cakes of cowdung and heaped them onto the fire outside her hut. We watched silently. Somehow Uncle Jim seemed to know that we were more fascinated by the cakes of cow dung than anything else in India.