Tikkipala, p.1
Tikkipala, page 1
Tikkipala
Sara Banerji
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
A Note on the Author
Chapter 1
Sangita, Ranee of Bidwar, stood at the edge of the Parwal palace garden holding her little boy by the hand.
She looked up at the mountain peak and realised she was happy again.
Anwar’s hand felt soft and warm against her own and the tiny wiggling of his fingers sent a soft stir of pleasure into Sangita’s heart. She had got him back. She could hardly believe it, for there had been a time when she had feared she might never be allowed to see her son again. Even now the thought sent a little chill of fear into her heart, making her squeeze his hand tighter.
‘Breathe deeply, darling,’ she told the little boy. ‘Like this.’ She opened her mouth and took in gulps of air, as though it was something to drink. As though air could quench thirst. As though breathing the cool wind could blow away two years of suffering. ‘There. What can you smell?’
‘Papa said I’ve always got to breathe through my nose.’
‘But Mama is back and she knows things too,’ said Sangita. She tried to smile but her lips felt stiff. ‘Go on. Try it. What can you smell?’
‘Whiskers,’ said Anwar.
‘Don’t be silly,’ laughed Sangita. ‘Tell me really.’
‘Tiger whiskers,’ persisted the little boy. ‘Papa said there were tigers up there.’
She sighed.
Above them the great rock bulged out like a too clever forehead, too clever for anything to grow upon, too smooth for anyone to climb.
‘Can you see anything up there?’
‘I can see tiny little trees,’ said the child.
‘They are enormous really. They just look little because they are so far away.’
‘Papa said…’
‘Don’t keep talking about Papa all the time.’
Anwar started to try to pull his hand away.
Sangita held on and squeezed her eyes to keep the tears in. Swiftly, as though to divert the direction of the child’s thoughts she asked, ‘Can you see animals up there, even though it’s so far away?’ Then, as he began to speak, she added swiftly, ‘Not tigers, Anwar. Don’t talk about tigers. I want to know what you really see.’
Anwar squinted into the dazzle of distant shade and light. ‘Well, there’s some people sitting on top of the trees.’
‘No darling,’ she told him gently. ‘There are no people living up there. It might be the only place in earth which is so high and difficult to get to, that people can’t reach it.’
‘I can see them’ said Anwar. ‘And Pap…’ He stopped himself quickly.
‘That’s monkeys,’ said Sangita. ‘Huge monkeys live up there.’
‘They’ve got hats on,’ said Anwar.
‘You’re being silly.’
‘I’m not. They really do have hats on. Can I have a monkey, Mama?’
She couldn’t stop herself constantly looking at him, as though each time she felt unable to believe what she had seen the last time. He had changed so much. When she had last seen him, he had been barely able to walk or talk and now he had become a grave little boy, dignified and slightly remote. She wondered if the long gap had permanently spoiled their relationship.
She wanted to ask him, ‘Do you love me?’ but did not dare. Instead she gently stroked the soft skin of his wrist with her finger, revelled in the furry feel of his skin and hoped he would not try to pull his hand away again. She had got him back. That was all that mattered. The past was behind them.
When her husband, the Raja of Bidwar, sent her home to her parents two years before, she has asked him, ‘For how long?’ and tried to keep herself from crying.
‘Until I have made up my mind what to do.’
She wanted to throw herself at his feet, to weep, to plead, to swear that that nothing like it would ever happen again, to implore him to forgive her, but she knew from the chill of his expression that she would be humiliating herself for nothing, and instead just asked, ‘How long will you take to make up your mind?’
‘I don’t know. Give me time to think about it. When I am ready I will let you know.’
She had entered her parent’s home a disgraced woman.
Her parents had been delighted and proud when she became the Raja’s bride three years before and now they could not bear to look at her. During meals she sat hunched and ashamed at their table, while they ate in horrified silence. Several times during those awful months that lingered on into years, Sangita tried to explain, but her parent’s dismay was so great, they would not listen. Quickly they would change the subject and when Sangita tried to force her father to hear her, he said, ‘Because of your behaviour, your life is ruined and you have only yourself to blame. Now please do not mention the matter to me anymore, for even to hear you speak of it brings a pain into my heart.’ He suffered from a heart condition and the family always had to be careful not to do anything to upset him.
After the Raja returned Sangita to him, he lay for two whole days in bed in a darkened room, with the doctor administering to him every hour and the people of the house talking in whispers so as not to make a noise that might startle him and tilt him into death.
‘Walk without shoes on,’ Sangita’s mother ordered. ‘For if your soles make the smallest clattering you will not only be guilty of betraying your husband, but you will have killed your father also.’ Her mother’s voice, always deep, took on a new funereal depth, her eyes became hollow and dark ringed and her shoulders bowed after Sangita’s disgraced return.
Sangita followed her mother from room to room telling her, ‘I couldn’t help it. There was nothing I could do,’ while her mother put hands over her ears saying, ‘I don’t want to hear anything. Things are bad enough already and talking of this will make it worse.’
‘It was my husband who encouraged me to accept the invitations from the Collector,’ Sangita told her mother’s muffled ears. ‘He said it would improve relationships with the British.’
‘I don’t want to hear,’ cried the mother.
‘And when the Collector’s daughter and I became friends and started playing tennis together, he was pleased. He said I was creating a bridge between our two nations…’
But her mother rushed into another room and slammed the door.
‘You made a noise,’ shouted Sangita through the key hole. ‘Now if Papa dies it will be you who killed him and not me.’ She was going wild and mad with her desperation because of having no one who would listen to her. She was saying awful things which she instantly regretted, but could not stop herself.
She longed for Daisy, but her friend had returned to England and Sangita knew that whatever happened, even if she, Sangita, was allowed to return to the palace of Bidwar and take up her place as the Raja’s wife again, she would probably never see Daisy again.
Sangita was not even given a chance to say goodbye to Daisy and could not write to her for she did not know the address and had no way of finding it.
She got no letters from Daisy either, though she felt sure her friend was writing to her, for several times her mother quickly whisked an English airmail letter from the post before Sangita had time to get there.
Once Sangita tried to snatch the letter from her mother’s hand. ‘Give it to me. You must. It is mine. It is stealing to take away my letter.’
But her mother held on grimly, saying, ‘You are mistaken. This is only an official letter for your father.’
‘Let me see it then,’ cried Sangita, as her mother began to shove the letter into the blouse of her sari. ‘Show me. Since when did our father get official letters from England?’
‘All the time,’ said the mother. ‘You know nothing.’ And she strode away, this time too, not walking silently, but letting her slippers slap loudly against the marble floor as though the father was not laying a wall away, nearly dying from a heart attack.
Sangita ached for Daisy almost as much as she longed for her child. Until Daisy came there had never been any young British people living in Bidwar. Sir Knutley Smithers had been the Collector there from the time of Sangita’s earliest memories. He was a pompous old man with a red face who breathed snortingly down nostrils that sprouted an amazingly large amount of long hairs and wore a dinner jacket and bow tie in the evening, no matter how hot the weather. When he was invited for dinner, Sangita’s mother always instructed her daughter beforehand, ‘When you meet him, make sure you don’t stare at his nose.’
Ayah would dress Sangita in a silk kurta panama weighted with golden zari and pearls, clasp golden bangles round her wrists and a diamond choker round her throat, then bring her down to be presented to the Collector.
‘My daughter, Sangita,’ her father would say each time, as though otherwise the English Coll ector would not know who this small girl was. ‘Come, stand by the chair of Sir Edward and say good evening.’
Reaching out, hardly looking at her, the English Collector would pinch Sangita’s cheek with large pink fingers that smelled of tobacco, soap and horse, and say, ‘Have you been a good girl?’ then return to his plate without waiting for her answer. His breath always smelled of brandy. She would hastily avert her eyes from the quivering nose hairs as she answered, as she had been instructed, ‘Yes, sir.’
At this point Sangita’s father would tell the ayah, ‘You can take her away now,’ and Sangita would be returned to her room, the ayah chiding, as they went up the winding stairs, ‘Your Mama told you not to look at the Collector’s nose, so why did you disobey her?’
Then one day, when Sangita was grown up and married the Raja of Bidwar, Sir Knutley Smithers retired and in his place came Daisy’s father.
‘We will have to go round to the new Collector’s house and make ourselves known to him.’ grumbled Sangita’s husband. ‘Even though he is not even knighted, because he is British it is we who must make the first visit.’ He felt insulted but because of a complicated dispute he was involved in regarding land and the British government, was forced, for the moment, to humiliate himself. ‘Though once this matter is sorted out, these people will be compelled to show me proper respect.’
Her husband would not have allowed Sangita to accompany him at all, if it had not been for the fact that both Raja and Ranee were on the invitation.
This expecting a man to be always partnered by his wife, was, the Raja knew, one of the quirks of the British and in his present delicate situation, he was forced to accommodate them.
He told Sangita, ‘Because of your youth, it is my duty to instruct you in how to deport yourself in front of this foreigner, who, although a person of lower rank, is also the representative of the British government and as you are aware I am being forced to propitiate them in order to retain my legal property. It is important, therefore, that you behave correctly. There have been occasions,’ he went on, ‘in which I have felt you have not behaved with the modesty required of the wife of the Raja.’
Sangita, he said, had let him down the time she had taken part in the men’s conversation and then there had been that time when she had thrown a ball for the collector’s dog, then gone running across the lawn with the animal, allowing her bare ankles to be seen by all. ‘You must keep your palu over your head throughout the visit and also completely covering the shoulders.’
When the Raja and Ranee of Bidwar arrived, a European girl with very long legs and wearing a dress so short that it stopped before it reached her knees, rushed to the car.
‘I’m Daisy and you must be Sangita. Welcome to our home. Pa says you are exactly my age.’ She said excitedly. She ignored the Raja
On Daisy’s head was what looked like a golden Roman helmet, fitting tightly round her face and from which sprouted a single long feather. Round her neck she wore a necklace so long that it reached below the hem of her minuscule dress. On her feet she wore a pair of golden high heeled shoes.
Before the waiting bearer had time to do so, Daisy had whisked the car door open on Sangita’s side.
‘Come on. Get out. I can’t wait to get to know you. It’s been awful, living here all this time with everybody old enough to be my granddad.’ She gave the Raja a quick glance and laughed. She did not seem to notice the Raja’s glare of fury.
As Sangita got out, shrouded in her sari and heavy jewels, Daisy was still jabbering on, ‘there’s a marvellous tennis court here, but everyone is so old. I don’t want to play tennis with a lot of old men. So I hope you play tennis. And there’s a swimming pool too. Do you swim?’ She did not wait for Sangita’s answers as though these questions were merely rhetorical and Sangita, because she was as young as Daisy, would be sure to answer ‘yes’ to everything.
Later, seated in the grand drawing room and sipping chilled sherbet served by the uniformed butler, Sangita looked away each time Daisy was forced to tweak down her tight and tiny skirt. She had never, in her whole life, seen so much of a woman’s body. When Sangita dared peep again, Daisy was laughing, her blue eyes sparkling, as though she found Sangita’s embarrassment funny.
While Sangita’s husband and Daisy’s father talked about important things, Daisy came over sat beside Sangita.
‘Your clothes are darling,’ she said with a laugh, taking up a pinch of the heavy silk in her fingers. ‘I do like them.’ Her nails were long and painted with crimson varnish. ‘But aren’t they rather hot in this weather?’ Daisy’s laughing mouth was crimson too painted with bright lipstick. Although she was clearly a girl in every other way, her breasts were as flat as those of a young boy’s. Later she would tell Sangita that this was because she wore a hand towel pinned tightly round her chest to press her bosom down.
‘I like your clothes too,’ murmured Sangita and then glanced nervously in the direction of her husband.
As they left, Daisy told the Raja, ‘You’ve got to let your wife come again tomorrow and play a game of tennis with me,’ and when the Raja looked as though he was about to say ‘no’ persisted, ‘Relations between Britain and India will suffer if you don’t agree.’
The Raja winced.
The Collector said, ‘You will be doing us a great service, sir, for my daughter is feeling lonely without the company of other young people.’
‘If it will create good relations between your government and my country,’ said the Raja stiffly, ‘then I suppose I must allow it.’ And later told Sangita, ‘Remember that the Collector’s daughter is an English girl and that their customs are different to ours. And also that she is of a lower class.’
Sangita persuaded her husband to let her wear a simple cotton sari on the day of the tennis game.
‘You will look like a peasant. What will they think?’ he said at first.
‘I shall look ridiculous, all draped up as though I’m going to a wedding when Daisy’s only got a short frock on,’ Sangita argued.
Daisy threw her arms round Sangita when she arrived. ‘I didn’t think you’d come. I thought they wouldn’t let you because they’d think I was a bad influence.’
‘Why would they think that?’
‘My father said that the people here feel very shocked at the way we modern young people dress. He tried to get me to wear a longer skirt and to cover my arms when you and your father came the last time, but I wouldn’t do it and he couldn’t make me. I think you look super, by the way.’
This time Daisy wore a sleeveless muslin frock that hung straight from her shoulders to half way down her thighs. In strongly resembled, to Sangita’s eyes, a rickshaw wallah’s genji apart from the fact that it ended in a transparent fringe, was caught by a sash at the hips. Today Daisy wore no hat and Sangita did not need to keep her head covered either for there were no one around to whom she must show respect.
Daisy won easily. ‘I don’t know how you managed at all with that sari on,’ she said as they came, panting, off the court. ‘You would have beaten me if you’d been wearing trousers.’
They were sitting under the fan on the veranda drinking nimbu pani.
‘’Come. I’ll teach you how to do the chachacha,’ said Daisy. ‘Pull up your sari and I’ll show you.’
Giggling at the thought of her husband’s warnings, Sangita hitched her sari to her knees while Daisy wound up the gramophone and put a record on. ‘Come on, like this. Keep your knees together and swing your legs out to the side.’ Round the veranda went the two of them, till at last their legs became tangled and they fell in a giggling heap on the floor.
Sangita discovered that there was only three weeks between their birthdays. They were both sixteen.
‘I can’t believe you’ve got a baby already,’ said Daisy. ‘I don’t plan to even get married for years. I want to have lots of fun first. I must have still been at school when you got married.’
Sangita said nothing.
In the weeks that followed, Sangita and Daisy were often in each other’s houses, playing tennis, dancing to the cranky old gramophone, or when the weather was too hot for such things, lying limp and luscious on the veranda under the noisy fan.
Daisy taught Sangita the latest popular songs from England and together they would sing ‘Joshua, gosh you are, better than lemon squash, you are,’ or ‘Let him go and let him tarry, let him sink or let him swim. He doesn’t care for me and I don’t care for him.’ ‘This is my favourite,’ cried Daisy. ‘He flew through the air with the greatest of ease, that daring young man on the flying trapeze.’
