The Hindi-Bindi Club Read online

  Kapoor Road was a wide, pretty, tree-lined lane with three bungalows on either side, four families total, each connected to the government. Bauji, my father, was a civil engineer, like his father. One of his brothers worked for the railways; the other taught at the Government College. They had two married sisters—one lived near Amritsar, the other in Delhi. Dadaji and Dadiji—my paternal grandparents—lived next door to us with my professor uncle, their eldest son.

  Next to them lived a Muslim doctor from Ferozepur. He had two wives, a sign of prosperity. One was his first cousin, a custom common among Muslims, the other a blue-eyed widow from Kashmir, young enough to be his daughter. Surprisingly, the wives got along great.

  Across the road lived my best friend Zarkha Ansari. We were born the same month, Zarkha on the sixth and me on the fifteenth, which made us both Number 6 in numerology. Our fathers, both London-returned engineers, played tennis and cards at the same club. And we both had older brothers who would have loved to bunk school to play cricket, guli-danda, football (soccer), bantay (marbles), lattoo (yo-yo), kabbadi, or their favorite winter sport: kite fighting.

  Next to Zarkha lived the sons of a wealthy landowner. A retired senior government officer, he somehow accomplished the rare feat of infiltrating the exclusive Gymkhana Club. Membership couldn’t be bought, at any price; entry was strictly by European pedigree. A sign outside read: “Dogs and Indians Not Allowed.” No one knew for sure how he got in, but there was no end to the speculations. While living in the Cantt, as they called the Lahore Cantonment, he built two bungalows in Krishanagar in addition to his country estate, so that his grandchildren could attend St. Anthony’s and Sacred Heart, two of Lahore’s fine English-medium schools. We seldom saw a girl in their family wear the same salwarkameez twice, never one made of homespun cloth, like most of mine and Zarkha’s. “They’re more English than the English,” said Bauji.

  In those early years of my life, every day brought a fun-filled adventure. I’ll share one of my favorite memories with you. It happened when Zarkha and I were four.

  You think a woman my age can’t remember back that far? I remember everything. People, places, conversations…A good memory is both a gift and a curse.

  Now, on to my story….

  Kapoor Road had many kids, but most were either too young, or too old, or too male to play with Zarkha and me, and even so, we always preferred each other’s company. One evening, after we tired of kokla-chhapaki (a game similar to duck-duck-goose), Zarkha and I were playing kikli—holding hands, leaning back, and spinning. Her brothers Tariq, Basit, and Usman were playing guli-danda, a ball-and-bat–type of street game where you whack a small stick with sharpened edges (guli) with a longer batting stick (danda). My brothers would have been playing, too, but they were inside receiving lectures from Biji for neglecting their studies.

  With his danda, Tariq struck a conical edge of the six-inch guli. When it flew up, he swung and sent the guli airborne over his brothers’ heads. It was then that we noticed the stray dog.

  “Hey!”

  “Look there! Look there!”

  “Where did he come from?”

  When the guli landed, the dog picked it up. Tail wagging, he trotted to Tariq, deposited the guli at his feet, and nudged it forward a few times with his nose. He was a really cute dog. He looked like a cotton ball that had rolled around in the dirt.

  Tariq laughed. “Looks like we have a new player.”

  “He smells mutton,” Basit said. “Ammiji’s biryani.”

  “Is that so, you hungry beggar?” Tariq hit the guli, and again the dog fetched it.

  “I’d run all the way from Anarkali for Ammiji’s biryani,” Basit said.

  “I’d run all the way from Rawalpindi,” said Tariq.

  “I’d run all the way from…from Kashmir,” said Usman. He was the youngest of the brothers and didn’t like to be left out of any one-upmanship.

  Zarkha turned to me. “I’m hungry.”

  “Me, too,” I said. We typically ate later than Zarkha’s family.

  She tugged my hand and led me behind her house. In those days, we had detached kitchens. “Ammiji, we’re hungry,” Zarkha said to her mother. “Can we eat biryani?”

  Zarkha’s mother wore a bunch of keys—guchcha—tied to the end of her dupatta, which she draped over her shoulder. Busy supervising the naukarani who was flipping chappatis on a hot tawa, she said, without looking at us, “Yes, go wash.”

  Half forgetting, half ignoring Biji’s rules about eating or drinking outside our house, I followed. We took turns washing at the hand pump and sat at the chauki on low, jute-woven stools. Only then did Zarkha’s mother notice me. She looked surprised but greeted me warmly, as always.

  “Namaste,” she said.

  “Namaste,” I replied.

  Good manners dictated the person who spoke first greeted the listener according to her religion, respecting each other’s religions the golden rule of politeness. When I greeted Zarkha’s mother first, I said, “Salaam alaikum,” and she replied, “Walaikum as-salaam.” Peace be with you.

  Zarkha’s mother smiled. “I think your mother’s calling for you.”

  “I don’t hear her,” Zarkha said.

  “Zarkha. It’s time for Sonia to go home.”

  “But we’re eating biryani…You said…”

  Her eyes clouded. “Sonia can’t eat with us. Her parents wouldn’t like it. Isn’t that right?”

  How did she know Biji’s rules? Mothers mysteriously knew everything!

  I hung my head. “I have to go home. Khuda hafiz,” I said in parting. At the gate, when I peered back over my shoulder, Zarkha’s mother’s expression looked pained. At home, I asked Biji, “Why can’t I eat or drink at Zarkha’s house?”

  She glanced up from her knitting. “Because you’ll fall sick.”

  I couldn’t very well tell her that Zarkha smuggled delicious bakarkhani from Gawalmandi to me all the time, and not once had I experienced ill effects from eating these layered, chappati-sized and -shaped crisps made by a Muslim baker.

  “But Zarkha doesn’t fall sick,” I said. “Tariq doesn’t fall sick. Basit—”

  “Hindus and Muslims don’t share food and drink. Bas.” Period. End of discussion. That was the moment I realized although we had people over all the time—our family was social, friendly, and outgoing—our dinner guests were never Muslim.

  In the days that followed, we adopted the dog. Or rather, the dog adopted us, spending his afternoons sleeping under what patches of shade he could find. We named him Moti—pearl.

  “Is Moti a Hindu dog or a Muslim dog?” I asked Zarkha. “He eats your scraps and our scraps.”

  “He must be both,” Zarkha said. “Some days, he’s Hindu. Some days, he’s Muslim.”

  Ah, yes. This made perfect sense. “Monday, he’s a Hindu. Tuesday, a Muslim.” I had learned the days of the week, and I counted each one on my fingers. “Wednesday, Hindu. Thursday, Muslim. Friday—”

  “Friday must be Muslim.”

  “Okay.” I started over. “Monday, Muslim. Tuesday…”

  Zarkha joined in, and together we giggled and sang to the tune of a popular song.

  It didn’t take long before I reasoned if Moti could be both Hindu and Muslim, so could I. One Friday morning, I announced to Biji as she churned buttermilk, “Today I’m a Muslim. I can’t eat here, only at Zarkha’s.” I hoped Zarkha’s mother was making her biryani again. Maybe I should have waited to be sure.

  Biji stopped churning. “Sonia, you can’t be a Muslim. You were born a Hindu. You can only be a Hindu in this life.”

  “But Moti’s both—”

  “Moti’s a dog. Moti doesn’t have a religion. Only people have religions.”

  I frowned. This was all very confusing. People were very confusing.

  In my next life, I wanted to be a bird. Or a cow. Or a cat. I didn’t tell Biji this. Sweat beaded on her upper lip, and she looked pale. I thought maybe she was falling sick.r />
  When I think back on those early years in Lahore and Kapoor Road, I rank them among the happiest, most carefree of my life. That’s what makes me so sad.

  Among the many things I left behind was a child’s innocence.

  At the Galleria, I stare at the display window of the Godiva boutique with yearning. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Be strong. With a groan, I force my feet to move, drag myself away. Outside Nordstrom’s, a Salvation Army Santa rings his bell for donations. I dig into my wallet and stuff a twenty into the cup.

  “Thank you. God bless,” he says.

  “You, too. Merry Christmas.”

  Next on my list: BUY PJs. Every year for Christmas, I buy new nightclothes for the whole family. When Preity and Tarun were little, it was the one present we let them open the night before Christmas. They’d bathe before bed and wake up Christmas morning fresh and clean in their new jammies. I got the idea for this tradition from Uma back in the Boston Days.

  A bunch of us were suffering another bout of homesickness reminiscing about the Hindu festivals we missed most. Diwali, of course, our five-day Festival of Lights. Uma also missed Durga Puja. Meenal missed Ganpati. And I missed Lohri. We started swapping stories about our family traditions. Uma pointed out that going forward, we would create new favorite traditions, and we could certainly incorporate some of our old favorites. After all, the common themes of holidays are the triumph of the human spirit and giving thanks.

  Leave it to Uma. She has a knack for turning lemons into lemonade. When she eloped with Patrick, she became the center of gossip in our Indian friends circle. People still blather over whether Uma’s brave or brazen, but I have to tell you, I admire her. When we first met, I expected her to be a stuck-up smarty-pants Bong (Bengali) with her nose either in a book or up in the air, sniffing her disdain at the simpletons in her midst. Was I ever wrong! Instead, it felt as though Uma jimmied open a sticky window with a crow-bar, airing out rooms that were stifling, choking with inbred fatalism. Sure, I coughed a while, but eventually, my lungs cleared.

  Fifteen minutes on the phone with Uma can lift your spirits better than an hour of yoga and meditation. She’s the most open-minded of my friends. Obviously. She defied convention and married a firangi—Westerner. Which doesn’t mean I tell her everything. Even a loudmouth like me knows certain topics you just don’t discuss, not even with the people closest to you.

  Anyway, it’s thanks to Uma that I meshed some well-loved traditions of Lohri with Halloween, Diwali with the 4th of July, and for Christmas, I recycled her family’s Durga Puja tradition of getting new clothes.

  As I cut through the lingerie department, a silk nightgown catches my eye. Red. Festive. Sexy. I find my size (hooray!) and remove the hanger from the rack.

  A voice in my head says, “Old lady, have you no shame?”

  “Shut up,” I tell the voice. “I intend to enjoy this body as long as I’ve got it.” As the Punjabi saying goes, Wakt noon hath naen phar-da. There is no hand to catch time.

  Meenal may be ready to renounce worldly pleasures, but I’m not. And good sex, unlike good chocolate, has negative calories.

  Do you know, beta, that everywhere I’ve lived, winter has been my favorite season? I love winter holidays….

  In Delhi, we had Lohri, the bonfire festival signifying the harvesting of winter crops, celebrating fertility and goodwill. While Indians all over celebrate winter solstice on January 14, the day the sun enters Capricorn according to Hindu astrology, different regions have different names and traditions for this day. For Punjabis, it’s Lohri.

  Some of our Lohri traditions are similar to fall harvest celebrations here. In the morning, kids go from door to door, caroling about a Punjabi Robin Hood and demanding lohri—loot—like trick-or-treating. When we received money or a sweet, we would sing, “Ai ghar ameera da.” This house is full of the rich. If we didn’t receive any lohri, we sang, “Ai ghar bhukka.” This house is full of misers.

  In the evening, we dressed in our best, warm clothes and gathered with our family and friends around festive bonfires. Lit sparklers and firecrackers. Tossed puffed rice, popcorn, sugarcane sticks, snacks, and sweets into the flames, singing, “Aadar aye, dilather jaye!” May honor come and poverty vanish. As the frigid air filled with the sweet-smoky aroma of burning sesame seeds and jaggery, we danced and sang the night away. I credit these jovial Lohri bonfires for helping me get over my phobia of fires, though I still have my moments….

  Beta, don’t ask, I don’t want to talk about it.

  Have I told you about Basant in Lahore? The festival of kites and colors to exalt the onset of spring. We would say, “Aaya basant, paala udant.” Warm weather comes, cold weather flies away. Kite flying was a cold-weather sport, mostly for boys. In winter, the boys of Kapoor Road came home from school and raced straight to rooftop terraces to send up their kites. Soon our mohalla echoed with cries of, “Bo-kata! Bo-kata!” The kite’s been cut! You see, kite strings were coated in a paste of ultrafine powdered glass—harmless at rest, but with velocity, sharp enough to bloody fingers, much the same as a paper or cardboard cut—ouch! Fliers battled to cut each other’s kite strings and chased booty that fell from the sky, finders keepers.

  Once, Zarkha and I were playing stapu—hopscotch—in the courtyard behind my bungalow when a fancy, multi-cornered kite thunked down right in front of us. Our eyes went wide. This wasn’t just any kite. It was a patang, the maharaja of kites. Far showier, pricier than the common guddis and paris, patangs were the most coveted booty of all.

  Whoops of excitement sounded from the wooden parapet—from my brothers Sunil and Harinder and cousin Shankar, better known as Sunny, Dimples, and Chhotu. While Dimples and Chhotu dashed for the stairs, Sunny, the eldest, rappelled down a banyan tree with the agility of a monkey! As “Bo-kata!” battle cries grew closer, Zarkha and I screamed and ran into the house because we knew any second, the courtyard would be swarming with boys. And it was! That is, until Biji came out and chased them all away because they were scaring the buffalos we kept for fresh milk.

  Needless to say, Basant was a much-anticipated holiday, not just in our mohalla, but in every corner of Lahore. Before dawn, we awoke to the beating of drums, the dhol-wallah going down the road, signaling the arrival of Basant. Our gazes shot to the sky, filled with candlelit box kites. So beautiful, so peaceful that sight. As if stargazing, we watched the luminous lanterns twinkle, the only waking moments when not one of us talked.

  By daybreak, we congregated on the rooftop terrace dressed in yellow, the first color to emerge after the biting cold winter with vibrant mustard flowers, peeli chambeli, scentless yellow jasmine, and Amaltas trees signaling new life. Soon, we could barely see the sky through all the kites! Every color, shape, size. Wind dancers and warriors. Dipping, swerving, tangling. Watching a kite ascend to the sky took my breath away. My heart soared higher and higher with the kite, climbing the stairway to heaven.

  There wasn’t an empty rooftop in all of Lahore. Regardless of age, gender, religion, caste, or social standing, all Lahoris participated in the major festivals of Basant, Holi, Diwali, Eid, and Christmas. Nowhere else did I witness such collective merrymaking and communal harmony.

  Nowhere else and never again.

  “Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge…”

  These are words, beta, every educated Indian knows. You’d already know them, if we’d raised you in India. Still, even if you are here, not there, you must know your heritage. It’s how you got here.

  On the eve of India’s independence from the British Empire, as Lahore burned in communal riots, my family huddled around the radio, listening to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister and father of later prime minister Indira Gandhi.

  I remember Dadaji, usually aloof, removing his spectacles to dab tears as he grumbled over Panditji’s decision to deliver his address in English, the foreign tongue of our now-former rulers, a lan
guage the vast majority of Indians didn’t understand. The families of Kapoor Road, being Punjabi, shared a mother tongue. My generation also spoke English, or “gulabi English,” as we called English sprinkled with Punjabi. While my father spoke English, my mother didn’t; most of their generation and older spoke Punjabi exclusively.

  “At the stroke of the midnight hour,” Panditji’s confident voice boomed, “when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new; when an age ends; and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance…”

  At six, I didn’t understand the meaning of these words, or the mixed emotions people had about them. Now I understand all too well.

  “We end today a period of ill fortune, and India discovers herself again…”

  Unfortunately, our period of ill fortune wasn’t over yet.

  In 1947, my world went crazy. Lahore—a modern, cultured, charming, progressive, and tolerant city—descended into chaos. Though Lahore was awarded to Pakistan, my family never intended to leave. And though we fled to escape the violence, we never dreamed it would be permanent, that the borders would be sealed, and we would be exiled forever. More than Indians or Pakistanis, we were Punjabis, Lahoris. For generations, the land of five rivers flowed through our veins, until the knife of Partition slit our wrists.

  The Cost of Independence.

  One night, my father came home pale and shaking. A train had arrived at Lahore Station. A ghost train. Every passenger dead. Slain. They were Muslim refugees migrating west. All men, not one young woman among the corpses. But bags and bags were found heaped full of bloody, severed breasts.