The Crow Eaters (2 page)

‘Help!’ screamed Jerbanoo, dropping her mug. Lifting the skirt of her sari with one hand, she fled towards the cart.

‘Get to one side, change your direction!’ yelled Freddy, gesticulating with both arms.

Terrified into imbecility, Jerbanoo continued to dash in a straight line ahead of the buffalo.

‘Move this way, move away!’ shouted Freddy, waving his arms east and west and running to her.

Just then a man popped up from the maize stalks and, bellowing for all he was worth, waving his shirt to attract the attention of the buffalo, diverted the stampeding animal. Being the owner of the beast, he quickly brought it under control.

Distraught and disarranged, Jerbanoo fell sobbing into Freddy’s arms. It was the last time he ever felt a wave of tenderness and concern for his mother-in-law.

Putli was grateful and pleased with Freddy’s gallant effort in rushing forward to help her mother. Taking advantage of her sentiments, Faredoon delicately presented his case for the elimination of the rooster.

‘God has saved us from a great calamity today,’ he declared after supper. ‘We owe Him thousands, nay millions of thanks for His grace in preventing bloodshed. As soon as we are settled near a Fire Temple, I will order a
jashan
of thanksgiving at our new home. Six
Mobeds
will pray over enough holy fruit, bread and sweetmeats to distribute amongst a hundred beggars … but it might be too late! We have been warned, the earth thirsts for blood! I intend to sacrifice the cock tonight.’

Putli gasped and paled. ‘Oh, can’t you sacrifice one of the hens instead?’ she pleaded.

‘It has to be the cock, I’m afraid,’ said Freddy, permitting his lowered head to sink sadly. ‘We all love the charming fellow, I know – but you cannot sacrifice something you don’t care for – there is no point in it.’

‘Yes, yes,’ agreed Jerbanoo vehemently. After all it was her blood the earth thirsted after – her life they were talking about!

Putli nodded pensively.

Next day they ate a succulent chicken and coconut curry.

But the dashing sprint had proved too much for Jerbanoo’s sluggish muscles. Her body ached horribly, and her initial gratitude was replaced by a sullen rancour. She blamed Freddy for having undertaken a journey that exposed her to the buffalo charge and to many subsequent vicissitudes.

Jerbanoo had been against the journey from the very start. Unnerved by the uprooting and by the buffalo, by the imperturbably polite stance adopted by her unfeeling son-in-law, she had ranted, moaned and finally resigned herself to martyrdom. Arms akimbo, black vindictive eyes snapping, she never failed an opportunity to castigate him. And the journey,
fraught with mishap and mild disaster, had given her plenty.

As on that pitch black night when the wooden wheel of the cart collapsed on the outskirts of the Rajastan desert – and a jackal suddenly howled into the stillness.

Jumping from the cart, palms on hips, Jerbanoo planted herself solidly before Freddy. Her winged eyebrows almost disappeared in her hairline. ‘So, now we are to be devoured by wolves! Why? Because your majesty wishes it! We are to spend the night in this forsaken place, at the mercy of wild beasts! Why? Because our simple village ways were not good enough for you! But don’t imagine I’m going to dance to your tune all the time. I’ve come for my daughter’s sake and I’m not going to stand this nonsense any longer! You turn right back! You hear me?’ she bawled, her eyes shining triumphantly in the glow of the lantern swinging from Freddy’s hand.

Freddy turned away silently.

‘You obstinate fiend, have you no idea how we are suffering? Have you no care for your wife and child? Oh, how can they live at the mercy of your whims … you heartless demon!’ she cried.

Putli slept through unconcerned. Her mother’s screeching tirades had grown so commonplace that the uproar hardly stirred her dreams.

Ignoring Jerbanoo, Freddy set about repairing the wheel. The slighted woman bounced back into the cart and sat quivering on her mattress.

The jackal bayed, his mournful notes amplified by the nocturnal stillness.

Jerbanoo’s spine grew rigid and out of sheer disgust and frustration, she howled back.

The jackal wailed, caterwauling eerily.

‘Owoooo!’ went Jerbanoo.

Excited by the discovery of a mate, the jackal launched an abysmal moan.

‘Yieeee!’ yowled Jerbanoo, and between the two rose the most ghoulish duet imaginable.

His flesh creeping, his beautiful white teeth on edge, Faredoon leapt on to the cart and scrambled into the hut. Hurling himself within an inch of his mother-in-law’s face he hissed, ‘Stop it … Stop that horrible noise or I’ll leave you right here … I swear!’

Jerbanoo subsided at once. Not so much at the ominous pledge as at the demented gleam in his eyes.

Within two hours they had resumed their journey, soothed and lulled by the hollow toll of the bell hanging from each bullock’s neck.

At other times the child had dysentery, Jerbanoo got cramp bathing in a canal, and Putli, stung by a scorpion, almost fell into a well. On these occasions, attracted by Jerbanoo’s strident, scolding outcries, the entire populace of several villages was entertained mercilessly to the shortcomings of her son-in-law.

Tiring of this, Freddy addressed himself exclusively to his wide-eyed, diligent wife, and Jerbanoo slumped into a restive, martyred silence.

Two dust-grimed, mosquito-bitten months later, Freddy led his worn beasts into the fertile land of the Five Rivers.

They passed through several villages, green with wheat and gold with mustard. They spent a few days in the golden city of Amritsar and finally came to Lahore.

Faredoon Junglewalla fell in love with Lahore straightaway. His mother-in-law, the corners of whose set mouth had drooped progressively as the journey had gone on, surveyed the bustling, steaming city with bleak eyes. She withheld, for the moment, her comment, glad of a chance to rest her rattled joints.

Freddy toured Lahore all day and each hour strengthened his initial love of the ancient city. That evening they parked the cart beneath a shady tree near the Badshahi Mosque. The horizon cradled the sun in a pink fleece, touching the poetic assembly of white domes with a blush, filling Freddy’s senses
with serenity. The muezzin’s cry, suppliant, plaintive and sensual, rose in the hushed air among the domes. Bells tinkled in a diminutive Hindu temple, snuggled in the shadows of the mosque. A Sikh temple, gold-plated, gleamed like a small jewel in the shadows and Freddy, responsive to all religious stimuli, surrendered his heart to the moment.

In the morning, having decided to adopt the city and try his luck, Freddy approached his wife for the gold. Putli, who had been laying out feed for the bullocks, glanced around with wary eyes.

‘Even trees,’ she advised sternly, ‘have ears.’

Placing a cautionary hand on Freddy’s arm, she led him into their room on the bullock-cart.

The baby slept in one corner and Jerbanoo sat cross-legged on her mattress, battling the enervating heat with a palm-leaf fan. At Freddy’s entrance she wrinkled her nose at the bazaar smells assailing her nostrils and, fanning herself into a froth, mutely advertised her displeasure of the city.

Freddy’s heart trilled in his chest. Jerbanoo’s disfavour set the seal on his inspired decision. Like hens settling on eggs, Freddy’s mind settled on a smug clutch of smiling thoughts. Right there he took a silent oath that he would never leave Lahore so long as he lived.

Turning his back upon his mother-in-law’s pointed histrionics, Freddy watched his wife unbutton the tight bodice beneath her sari blouse. Putli barely came up to his chest. Secure from prying, thieving eyes, she removed the cache that had pressed the flesh of her breasts from the onset of their travels. Carefully handing the cache to Freddy, she began buttoning herself back into her flattening cotton bodice. Freddy eyed with chagrin the buoyant little breasts as they disappeared. He reached stealthily for a last-minute touch but her censorious stare, warning him of his mother-in-law, stayed his hand.

There was a certain fixed quality to Putli’s humourless eyes, set well apart in the stern little triangle of her face, that often disconcerted and irritated Freddy. The only time he saw
her unwavering gaze dissolve was in bed. Then her long-lashed lids grew heavy with sensuality and there was such dogged and hedonistic devotion in her eyes for him, such a readiness to please and be pleased, that he became her slave.

As soon as Freddy left, Putli flung herself into an energetic orgy of work. In no time at all she had watered the bullocks, started a fire in the coal brazier and set a colander of vegetables and lentils to simmer. All this she did with such economy of motion and efficiency that her mother roused herself guiltily to give a hand. Taking the plate of rice from Putli she began to feed the child.

Freddy systematically found his way to the homes of the four Parsi families settled in Lahore: The Toddywallas, the Bankwallas, the Bottliwallas and the Chaiwallas. None of them practised the trades suggested by their names. The Toddywallas, a large joint-family, were the proprietors of a prosperous tea stall, and the Chaiwallas ran a bar. Mr Bottliwalla was a teller in a bank, and Mr Bankwalla conducted classes in ballroom dancing.

An endearing feature of this microscopic merchant community was its compelling sense of duty and obligation towards other Parsis. Like one large close-knit family, they assisted each other, sharing success and rallying to support failure. There were no Parsi beggars in a country abounding in beggars. The moment a Parsi strikes it rich he devotes a big portion of his energies to charity. He builds schools, hospitals and orphanages; provides housing, scholarships and finance. Notorious misers, they are paradoxically generous to a cause.

The four families were delighted by Freddy’s visit and enchanted at the prospect of another family come to swell their ranks.

In two days Freddy had ensconced his family in a flat atop his brand-new provision store in one of the most busy and commercially prosperous areas in town.

The very next evening, rigged out in a starched white coat-wrap that fastened with bows at the neck and waist, and crisp
white pyjamas and turban, he drove his cart to Government House.

Parking his splendid bullocks next to restive tonga horses, Freddy strode confidently up to the resplendent guards at the huge iron gates. The guards allowed him in almost at once and Freddy signed his name in the Visitor’s Register.

Having thus paid homage to the British Empire, established his credentials and demonstrated his loyalty to ‘Queen and Crown’, Freddy was free to face the future.

FAREDOON’S manly bearing and soft-spoken manners quickly found their way into Punjabi hearts. He had a longish, nobly-contoured, firm-chinned face. His slender nose was slightly bumped below the bridge, and large and heavy-lidded, his hazel eyes contained a veiled mystic quality that touched people’s hearts. His complexion was light and glowing. All this, combined with the fact that he was a Parsi – whose reputation for honesty and propriety is a byword–made him a man of consequence in the locality. His sales picked up almost at once and he began to live in reasonable comfort. He was even able to save a bit.

Faredoon made a point of giving small alms every Friday and his wife and mother-in-law never appeared in public without
mathabanas
– white kerchiefs wound around the hair to fit like skull caps. The holy thread circling their waist was austerely displayed and sacred undergarments, worn beneath short blouses, modestly aproned their sari-wrapped hips. Stern-visaged, straight-backed, the two women faced the world with such moral temerity that Hindu, Muslim or Christian, all had profound respect for the man and his family.

Putli was content. She fulfilled herself in housework and in the care of her children and husband. But her unblinking, seemingly inane eyes saw more than Freddy ever realised. They instinctively raked the depths of him and often enough, surfaced somewhat uneasily. Of one thing, though, she was sure: whatever else he might do, he would never stray. Blissful in her knowledge, she would, over the years, produce
seven children. From the joyous climax of conception to the delivery, Putli would enjoy it all.

But for all his steady progress at the start in Lahore, Freddy’s happiness was marred. Jerbanoo was a canker, a thorn in his side that blighted his life. She had not stopped moaning, sighing, muttering and quarrelling for a moment. His wife bore her mother’s eruptions stoically, attributing them to her uprooting and her widowed state. But Freddy, whose sensitive soul was more impatient of her rowdy outbursts, found her vitriolic presence increasingly unbearable.

She took a malicious delight in needling him, of this he was sure. She complained, had headaches, snored, wept and raved for the sole purpose of irritating him. Often he struck his head in despair, bemoaning his fate and wondering what monstrosities he had committed in previous births to merit this punishment.

He could not bear the way she appropriated the largest, choicest portions of food when they sat at table. Every time she pounced on the chicken dish, prying out bits of giblet and liver with her fingers and popping them into her mouth, he winced. The more he flinched, the more she delighted in swiping these delicacies from beneath his very nose and stuffing them into her voracious mouth. She would then sink back contentedly in her chair and pulling all the dishes closer to her plate, proceed gluttonously to help herself to second favourites.

But there is only so much a man can take. One lunch-time Freddy exploded. Taking firm hold of her plucking hand, he guided the giblet-pinching fingers across Putli to Hutoxi, who was now three years old. Ordering the startled child to ‘Eat!’ he quietly restored the plundered hand to its dumb-founded owner.

Wagging a long retributive finger across the table, wildly misconstruing the English text, he thundered: ‘Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings! Yes, you are eating out of the mouths of babes and sucklings!’

Not understanding the words but impressed nevertheless, the table waited in nervous suspense for him to continue. Jerbanoo squirmed in her chair, hatefully conscious of his stern, ascetic eyes and wagging finger. Whatever it was he said, there was no doubt in her mind that the thundering sentences were meant to vilify, condemn and annihilate her.

A solemn moment later, he demanded: ‘Are you a growing child? Must you eat all the liver and fat from my babies’ mouths? Look at them – see how thin they are!’ He pointed his quivering finger at Hutoxi and her year-old brother, Soli. They were rosy-cheeked and sturdy.

‘As a Zarathusti I am not permitted to look upon a crime and remain guiltless. My children are being murdered beneath my very nose and –’

Putli chimed a warning: ‘Mind the Demon of Wrath.’

‘The Demon of Wrath! Murder is being committed before my eyes and you want me to do nothing? I shall be as guilty in God’s sight as this glutton! There ought to be a law to flog greedy grandmothers like her,’ he proclaimed.

‘Freddy!’ squeaked his shocked wife.

‘You heard him! You heard what he said to me!’ squealed her mother. ‘Oh, that I should live to hear
him
say that to
me
! Oh God, rip the earth apart and swallow me alive!’

Jerbanoo surged mightily to her feet, knocking back her chair with a crash. For a fearful moment Putli believed the Deity, having taken her mother’s plea to heart, had sundered the floor of their dining-room.

Kicking the fallen chair aside, Jerbanoo stormed out and shut herself up in her room with a shattering detonation of slammed doors and bolts. She lay down, flat on her back, panting furiously.

An hour later she tiptoed to the kitchen and polished off the dinner prepared for the evening.

For two days Jerbanoo ate sparingly. Thereafter her hunger grew voracious and, undaunted, she gorged herself before her son-in-law’s burning gaze. She appeared to expand beneath
his very eyes. And the fatter she grew the leaner he became – and the leaner he became, the more Jerbanoo ate to vindicate herself – until both felt quite ill.

Her sudden expansion awed the household. Jerbanoo threw her newly acquired weight about with avenging zest. Not knowing what to make of her, Putli, the servants and the children allowed her domination. She swaggered all over the house, roaring commands and bequeathing counsel. She took complete charge of their lives and Freddy, too weak and bewildered to counteract her bullying, allowed the situation to slip out of hand.

Increasing her circle of acquaintances, Jerbanoo invited droves of plump, middle-aged ladies to long sessions of morning gossip and emotional unburdening. Nodding with sympathy, these Hindu, Muslim, Christian and Parsi ladies exhorted Putli to stand up to her tyrannical husband and take better care of her own mother. Freddy sensed that his good name and standing were being criticised publicly and he was resentful, but the more harried he became the less he was able to cope.

Not satisfied with commandeering the household, Jerbanoo extended her sway to the store. Whenever Freddy was away, riding roughshod over the salesman’s scruples, Jerbanoo appropriated huge quantities of chocolate, biscuits, perfume and wines. These were used by her and her friends at their leisure; or magnanimously bequeathed. Harilal the clerk and the two salesmen were constantly popping in and out of the store on errands. While they carried coyly decorated trays bearing gifts, invitations, and messages back and forth, Freddy found himself handling the store alone.

One particular evening, after a day spent in attending to customers, indenting ledgers and unloading a cart-load of biscuit cases single-handed, he trudged up wearily and told Putli: ‘This Olympic relay race has got to stop.’

‘What relay race?’ she asked, surprised.

‘This running to and fro of my staff. I have to cope with the work of three men single-handed. Harilal returns and the
salesman is off – the salesman barely shows his face when Krishan Chand is off – carrying my chocolates, my peanuts, my potato-crisps, and my biscuits to her friends! What is she up to anyway?’

‘Oh, come now, you don’t grudge her a little social life of her own, do you?’ chided his matter-of-fact spouse. ‘After all, you can’t expect her to go up and down running errands herself.’

Faredoon felt a dangerous pulse throb in his temple. Of late he had the depressing feeling that his wife had ganged up with her mother.

Later that night, rearing up weakly in bed, he startled Putli by suddenly shouting:

‘And while I’m at it, let me warn you … This looting of my store has got to stop! I tell you, I’ll have no stocks left. Who does she think she is, some goddamn princess?’ he demanded, close on tears.

‘Whatever has come over you these days?’ remonstrated his wife, getting out of bed to light an oil lamp. ‘I’ve never seen you so mean and petty. What if she takes a little something now and then to entertain her friends? After all, don’t forget, we have uprooted her …’

‘A little something?’ shouted Freddy interrupting her. ‘You call that a little something? Why, she eats like a horse at meals, and then swallows enough sweet chutneys, candied fruit and liqueurs to give an elephant diarrhoea – or haven’t you noticed her bloated dimensions of late?’ he spluttered sarcastically.

‘Not bloated,’ amended Putli, ‘puffed up. She is just puffed up with sorrow.’

‘What!’ exclaimed Freddy incredulously.

‘It’s been known to happen,’ she countered defiantly. ‘People have been known to puff up with sorrow – and God alone knows she has enough cause the way you treat her.’

‘That robust ox has puffed up with sorrow?’ repeated Freddy, at his wits’ end.

‘And,’ corrected his spouse, ‘she is not as robust as she
looks – for all her size she’s as weak as a twig. She is quite unwell, really.’

‘I suppose all that muscle on show is just a puff of air,’ mumbled Freddy faintly, feeling the bottom falling from his world.

And in fact Jerbanoo was really ailing. All in their turn the kidneys, the liver, the gall bladder and her joints upped and temporarily ceased the unequal struggle against layers of fat. A few years later even her uterus, under the strain of merry-making, over-eating and boisterous exertions, turned over. She was subject to a pain that none but an ‘English doctor’ could rectify.

‘Get an English doctor. Oh, I’m dying. Get an English doctor,’ she howled for an hour, waving aside all other suggestions. Freddy, faint at the thought of the enormous fee he would have to disgorge, was compelled to fetch one.

The doctor, a ferocious, undersized Englishman with a sandy moustache and bald head, won Freddy’s eternal gratitude by declaring, ‘There’s nothing wrong with you that a little dieting won’t cure – stop all that “pure butter, pure cream, pure fat” nonsense.’

Five minutes later, Freddy found himself plunged into a well of despair from which he never really emerged.

‘Doctor,’ Jerbanoo asked with piteous hesitancy, ‘I have not revealed this to my child even – but I often get a pain in my chest, here, right here. I know it is my weak heart … I’ve known it a long time. What am I to do? Oh, doctor, am I to die so young?’ she sobbed, her compelling, attractive eyes sparkling with tears.

‘Now, now Mama – ooooh my poor Mama!’ cried Putli, rising gallantly to the occasion. Freddy tried to disguise the happiness that Jerbanoo’s revelation had occasioned in him. Lowering his lids he looked grimly in the vicinity of Jerbanoo’s weak heart.

After thumping the barrel-like chest and listening through his stethoscope, the doctor pronounced sentence on Freddy’s happiness.

‘Must have been a touch of heartburn – overeating again. Your heart’s as tough as a steam engine. It’ll see you through eighty years if something else doesn’t pack up first.’

In retrospect, Freddy realised that his stars had been particularly feeble at the time. Everything went wrong collectively. His health deteriorated, his thinking was confused and his energy depleted. So effective was the malignity of Saturn in his horoscope that he weakly watched Jerbanoo usurp his authority in every sphere, impotent to counter the topsy-turvy turn of domestic events.

Jerbanoo stomped around with a smug, challenging look in her snappy eyes that Freddy dared less and less to meet. At the slightest hint of protest, at the mildest counter-suggestion, she would cannonade into an injured fury and scream at the very top of her voice for the benefit of the neighbours. Or, popping her offended eyes, she would sag into a melancholy fit of weeping so prolonged that Freddy, terrified of the resultant effect on his perpetually pregnant wife, was forced to appease and calm her with presents.

Bullied and blackmailed, Freddy felt himself sink into a muddy vortex.

Once, striking his forehead in exasperation he remonstrated:

‘For God’s sake, keep your voice down – must you always bray like an ass? Can’t you keep your voice human? What will the neighbours think.’

The retaliation to this impulsive rebuke was so severe that he never repeated his mistake.

‘And now my own son-in-law is calling me a donkey!’ shrieked Jerbanoo. The frizzy knot at the back of her neck came loose and the braid settled thin and quivering on her shoulder. ‘And now I’m forbidden even to talk in this house! Oh Putli take me back … Oh, my child, take me back to my childhood village. I will not spend a single moment in this house; not any more … not any more!’ she cried, flinging her arms around Putli and sobbing on her breast.

Putli glared at Freddy with tight-lipped censure. The exhortations of her mother’s friends having taken effect, she flatly intoned: ‘How dare you call my mother a donkey. How dare you! I would like to see anyone try and stop her from speaking in this house!’

‘Look, I’m not telling her to stop talking,’ explained Freddy wearily. There was a plea of despairing confusion in his eyes. ‘I’m merely requesting her not to shout so loud.’

‘Requesting? Requesting?’ snorted Jerbanoo, rearing her head like a cobra from Putli’s bosom. ‘You are always calling me names. Don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t touch this, don’t touch that – you go on and on until I feel frightened even to open my mouth; even to drink a drop of water in this house!’

Freddy choked with fury. The accusations were absurd and unjust. He was the one condemned to prowl around the house stealthily, not daring to speak for fear of touching off a revolution. Her statement that she feared even to drink water in his house stung him. Wheezing with subdued rage he said, ‘Of course you don’t drink water … a drop of water wouldn’t know where to lodge in your stomach – not with all that port wine, milk, sherbet and cognac you’ve pumped into it …’

He would have carried on but for the glacial, wide-eyed glower from Putli. Shrivelling hopelessly beneath her look, head downcast, he slunk down the stairs.