Diddi Read online

  My father was Lalsaip, a Lohani-ized version of Lalla sahib (beloved son). ‘One mistake Lalsaip has made, and which he will rue later,’ he’d announce for all to hear, ‘is entrusting the education of his eldest son to those monkey-faced white women. Just see how wild he has become already! Arrey, what do you expect of people who wipe their bums with paper!’ He spat here to show his disgust for people who did not wash their bottoms with water. ‘They’ve already changed his name, now they’ll work on his mind!’

  Tribhuvan was sent by my father to live in a cottage in Nainital with an English governess, Mrs Mumford, and her daughter, who gave him a new name—Tikker. When he came home, Lohaniji almost burst a blood vessel as he reported, ‘He is asking for a knife and fork to eat his chapattis with! I’m warning you, Dhulaini-jyu,’ he spluttered, ‘the time has come to put a sacred thread round his neck, and get him away from the evil influence of those two witches.’

  His impassioned appeal led to my brother’s sacred thread ceremony that winter. We were in Orchcha, where my father was the Dewan, and the event was nothing short of a wedding, I tell you. Our clan priest, Tikaramji, brought a contingent of pandits from Banaras. Maharaja Birju Sinhdeo’s royal elephant caparisoned with gold and silver ornaments stood at the gates of our house, decked like a bride. Lohaniji was called to whisper the sacred mantra in my brother’s ears and he hissed, ‘You are Tribhuvan once more, now, do you hear? No one will call you Tikker ever again!’

  It was perhaps on Lohaniji’s pleading that our education underwent a radical shift. We three, Jayanti, Tribhi and I, were packed off to my grandfather’s home in Almora and Lohaniji became our guardian. Pandit Gangadutt taught us Sanskrit; our mathematics teacher was Raghuvar Datt Joshi, widely regarded as the Ramanujan of Kumaon; while our grandfather himself took on the responsibility of teaching us English and Hindi.

  Lohaniji would shake us awake at five in the morning. He watched as we splashed our faces with cold water, bathed our eyes with Triphala and then herded us off on a long walk (Tribhi called it a safari). On our return, we were handed a glass of hot milk and Lohaniji would settle down to his long puja. I can taste that delicious milk even now, laced with ground almonds and crushed cardamoms and sweetened with sugar. Lohaniji used to get the rich milk from a special village, Phalsima, famous for its milk and dairy products. The head milkman there, Nagmal, was bullied to pulp by Lohaniji to ensure that he never dared to water it down.

  ‘Look here, Nagmaliya, you worm, if you ever dare to add even a drop of water to the milk you bring to this house, I’ll burn you to a cinder with my Brahmin eye.’

  ‘How can you even think of such a thing, Guru,’ the poor man stammered. ‘Add water in the milk for this house? I don’t want to go to hell, Ram, Ram…’

  Lohaniji had terrorized not just poor Nagmal and all the servants of the house but the town’s shopkeepers and vendors as well. He had told them all that his Guru, the awesome Narad Baba, had taught him ways of punishing human beings that they couldn’t dream of. According to Lohaniji, Narad Baba had taught him several secret mantras: among them was the art of getting stoned. Smoking marijuana was Lohaniji’s only vice and often, when lighting up his chillum, he would roll his red eyes to say:

  Better a girl than a boy

  Who has not tasted pot!

  All we knew was that as soon as he took his first puff, his mood changed magically for the better.

  Every morning, before we joined our grandfather for our lessons in the library downstairs, Lohaniji would make us write these lines from the great poet Tulsidas:

  Patience, faith and a discerning mind

  These are true companions in dark times.

  Literature, courage, honesty and God, says Tulsidas,

  Will never let you down.

  Day after day he made us transcribe them a hundred times to improve our handwriting. ‘Don’t you know any other lines, Lohaniji?’ we occasionally whined. One silent look from him at his puja and we would go back wearily to our task. I realize now that even though we did not understand their meaning and considered the daily grind some kind of Chinese torture he inflicted on us, Lohaniji embedded them so firmly in our minds and hearts that they became a sort of touchstone in our lives.

  ~

  The house adjoining my grandfather’s belonged to the family of Daniel Pant, a Christian who was once related to us from my mother’s family. However, after Daniel Pant converted to Christianity, our orthodox grandfather erected a wall to separate their world from ours so that we had nothing to do with each other. The three of us were sternly forbidden to even look that way.

  The wall may have separated our two homes but our worlds constantly collided. Right next to the wall lay their kitchen, and maddening aromas of delicious meats being cooked in their house wafted over, sneaked across to our boring Brahmin kitchen to inflict a resounding defeat on the pathetic dal, potato curry and rice that Devidutt dished up day after day. Knowing what that tempting aroma did to our Brahmin souls, Lohaniji would immediately shut the windows of our kitchen against its polluting intrusion, muttering curses under his breath as he did so. Sadly for him, it snaked its way through the cracks in the wooden shutters and doors and continued to drive us mad.

  We knew the children on the other side of our Berlin Wall— partly because we were after all from the same stock but also because their free and open lifestyle was so different from ours that it appeared infinitely more appealing than our spartan Brahmin regimen. Of all the children on the other side of the wall, Henry Pant was my special friend. He wore shining leather shoes, striped socks and sparkling white shirts with starched collars and a smart tie. His sisters Olga and Muriel (whom we called Marial behind her back) would change into gossamer Bamberg georgette saris in the evening for their customary stroll to the market. We almost died of envy.

  ‘Lucky bums!’ Tribhi sighed one day. ‘Look at the life they have and look at us! We have Pilgrim’s Progress and the Amar Kosh stuffed down our throats while they get to do whatever they want. Do you know,’ he told me, envy dripping from every syllable, ‘Henry eats an egg every day!’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes! They also eat meat every day.’

  Henry had draped himself over the wall and joined in the conversation at this point. ‘Not just every day, at every meal,’ he sprinkled salt on our wounds. ‘Not like you Hindus who eat greens and roots all the time!’ he added pityingly.

  ‘You may have forgotten that your grandfather and mine were first cousins, Henry Pant,’ I spat back, ‘we haven’t. He must have eaten the same greens and roots once.’ Henry was forced to concede this round to me and perhaps as a concession to the important historical issue I had raised offered us deprived vegetarians a deal.

  ‘If you are dying to see what we eat, I can arrange it,’ he said loftily. ‘But no one must ever get to know.’ Tribhi and I had our tongues hanging out by now and looked at him hopefully. Henry slid a hand into the pocket of his shorts, and drew himself up. ‘The price will be four walnuts each from the tree in your garden. At exactly ten every morning our cook puts the meat into the pot in our courtyard. If you can swing yourselves up that pomegranate tree there, and manage to perch on the wall, I’ll take care of the rest. We have a ladder on the other side and I’ll help you down to our side of the house.’ Then, like the Cheshire Cat, he disappeared from view but not before he reminded us of the rates of exchange: four walnuts from our tree for one sniff of their divine meat curry. His generous offer set our hearts aflutter: we could hardly imagine what the real curry would be like, when its mere aroma wafting through Lohaniji’s barricaded kitchen maddened us.

  On the dot of ten, the familiar fragrance wafted over. We rose to the call of the bubbling pot on the other side, furtively collected the mandatory eight walnuts and crawled across the sliding roof of my uncle’s house to reach the pomegranate tree. We knew that its branches were very frail, yet we swung ourselves from there, egged on by the tempting aroma of the ambrosial meat
pot that got stronger with each step. We stood trembling on the wall. Below us was Henry. ‘Have you brought the walnuts?’ he asked first.

  ‘Yes.’

  He whipped out the ladder and helped us down. There in front of us was a coal angeethi and on top of it was the pot of meat, bubbling away merrily. For a long while, we just gazed in ecstasy at the spectacle. Our hearts rose and fell with each rise and fall of the lid.

  ‘Give me the walnuts,’ commanded Henry.

  I quickly handed over the tax.

  ‘Remember you can smell it only once,’ he reminded me. ‘Four walnuts earn just one sniff.’

  I nodded. He lifted the lid and I shut my eyes to inhale the smell deep into my soul.

  A few years later, we went back from Almora to our parents. My father moved from one princely state to another as a Dewan and our lives underwent a dramatic change. We now lived a life of epicurean bliss compared to our days in Almora. There was not a single living thing we did not taste—waterbirds of all sizes and shapes, sambar, wild geese, turkey, turtles, partridges and quails, you name it. In Rampur, where my father was the Home Minister to the Nawab, every day a specially sealed dastarkhan would arrive from the royal kitchen. Before the Nawab ate anything, it had to be certified fit for the royal palate by my father. Then the meal was sealed once more and sent back. Often, we used to sneak a morsel from the platter.

  But I tell you even then nothing ever matched the pure bliss of the sniff of Henry’s meat pot in Almora.

  ~

  Those were the golden years of our life. Our house had a huge staff—Sohan Singh, Bishan Singh, Ummaid Singh, Thul (Big) Gusain and his brother Nan (Small) Gusain. Thul Gusain was the oldest of them all and a man of rather refined tastes. He was tall, with a long nose and wore little gold studs in his ears. My father was now Home Minister to the Nawab of Rampur and Lohaniji, who had seen diamond studs in the Nawab’s ears, used to sarcastically call Thul Gusain the Nawab of Anyarkot (the dark land), because his village lay close to the cremation grounds. Lohaniji declared that the smoke from the pyres had gone to Gusain’s head and fogged his brain. ‘That’s why it takes his brain so long to follow instructions,’ he was fond of saying. Nevertheless, he was quite partial to Thul Gusain. Then, suddenly, Lohaniji began to call him a ‘masaniya’ (a low-caste man who stokes funeral pyres). ‘Tell that masaniya to set the curds,’ he would tell another servant. Or, ‘Tell the masaniya to pick up the clothes from the terrace—it looks like it’s going to pour any minute.’ We were a little puzzled at Thul Gusain’s sudden demotion from nawab to masaniya.

  Then one day, it all became clear. ‘Don’t dare think, masaniya,’ Lohaniji was telling Thul Gusain, ‘that I have only two eyes. I have two at the back of my head as well, understand?’

  ‘Why do you say that, Guru? What did you see?’ Gusain stuttered, nursing the red weal from the slap that Lohaniji had just planted on his cheek.

  Lohaniji drew himself to his full height and thundered, ‘You dare to ask me that? Do you have any concern for the name and reputation of this house? Go slog somewhere else if this is how you want to behave. You are the father of two children, you shameless wretch, and your daughter is married to Nagmal’s son. Did you ever stop to think what will happen to her if her father-in-law finds out?’

  Thul Gusain bowed his head in shame as Lohaniji ranted. Later, we heard that Gusain had been spotted by Lohaniji flirting in the dark lane behind our house with a low-caste girl. Apparently he had hoped to marry her secretly.

  That day, we saw Gusain place his cap at Lohaniji’s feet and beg for forgiveness. But Lohaniji would not be moved. ‘Had you stolen money or gold, I may have forgiven you. But immoral behaviour I will not condone.’

  My mother pleaded his case but Lohaniji refused to melt. He dismissed Thul Gusain and none of us asked why he could not be given another chance.

  In those days, girls and women from high-born Brahmin families were not allowed to go to the market. There were just two occasions in the year when this rule was relaxed: the day of the Nanda Devi fair and on Diwali. Even then, we were allowed to watch the procession only from the balcony of Badrilal Sah’s house. Sahji was my grandfather’s friend and his house with its beautifully carved doors and balcony was a great vantage point. However, Lohaniji occasionally took me, the baby of the family, to the market with him. The beginning and end of such an expedition was the shop of his buddy, Sundarlal Sah. His smooth fair face with a sandalwood tilak on his forehead used to light up when he spotted Lohaniji. ‘Come, come, Guru,’ he would greet his friend. ‘So, what’s happening?’

  And the two would swap gossip and news. Tired of their inane conversation and with my head reeling from the sickening odour of the Himalayan herbs and spices—jambu, gandhrain—sold in Sundarlal Sah’s grocery store, I would get restive. Lohaniji would pass me a bit of churan or some bulls’ eyes (whatever happened to those delightful sweets, I wonder?) to keep me quiet. Finally, I would start whining, ‘Come on, Lohaniji, let’s go to the bazaar, please!’

  ‘Keep quiet, girl,’ he’d snap back. ‘What is this if not the bazaar? Girls should not go beyond this point. Haven’t you heard me say: Woman must never go to the bazaar / And men never to the larder.’

  But like all little girls I yearned to visit the flea market outside Ramsay School, where stalls sold fake coral necklaces, shining ornaments, bells, ribbons and trinkets that you braided into your plaits and swung around. What joy it was to swing your plait with those baubles on them! Sometimes I pity the children I see now, with their collection of electronic toys. They will never discover the joy that we held in the palm of our hands. Kiteflying, grinding glass to stick to the string, a trick my brother taught me, or tossing a pebble up in the air and sweeping the others on the ground before it landed in a game of gitti. The adroitness of manouevres like ikkam, dukkam, muththi—what do they know of these? What about kissing a stone for luck and tossing it across the stones before a game of hopscotch? All these are lost arts now and more’s the pity.

  The children of today tire of their toys because they have so many to choose from. On the other hand, no matter how often we played cat’s cradle or sang the local version of ‘Oranges and lemons’, we never felt bored. My sister Jayanti’s skill at making ragdolls was awesome and once, when, after a fight, my brother tossed my favourite ragdoll into the fire, I wept as if I had lost a child.

  If ever one of us fell ill, Lohaniji was summoned to help. To ease an earache, he would rub the leaf of the madar plant between his palms and put two drops in the offending ear. The pain vanished. And I must tell you the secret of why none of us ever suffered from a stye in the eye.

  One day, Lohaniji dragged a snake charmer to the house. We looked at his fearful red eyes, his matted locks and huge turquoise earrings hanging from lobes that touched his shoulders and almost ran inside. His beard was parted in two halves and dyed red with henna. From his shoulder hung a bamboo pole with a basket at each end. We could hear the hiss of the snakes that lay in there beneath the covers.

  ‘Here, maharaj,’ said the man and lifted his reed pipe to his mouth as he uncovered the basket. He started to play on the pipe and the snakes slowly emerged from their baskets. ‘I have brought these beauties straight from Amarkantak. See, even their fangs have not been taken out!’

  Then, to our horror, he lifted one of them and folded it like a posy. Lohaniji made us shut our eyes and the man touched the slithering snake to our closed eyes as he chanted some mantra. ‘There!’ he said in a satisfied tone. ‘Now these children will never get a stye. I will shave off half my moustache if they do.’

  Lohaniji was convinced this treatment would work and none of us dared to ask where we would find the magician if it failed and we needed to shave off his moustache. However, his snake guarded our eyes so well that we never ever suffered from a stye in the eye. Lohaniji’s skill as a dentist was no less impressive. The minute a milk tooth was ready for pulling out, he would lasso it out with a piece of threa
d and make us bury it under a fresh patch of grass. As a special treat, we were given delicious semolina halwa dripping with ghee. We all had straight teeth and when I see little children with wires cruelly holding their teeth in, I feel the pain they have to undergo to be able to smile prettily when they grow up. Perhaps people today have ceased to believe in the natural processes of growth and natural correctives. Everyone wants to be perfect, look perfect and suffer for it.

  Lohaniji’s repertoire of ghost stories was legendary and he claimed each one was true.

  ‘I don’t know why these damned female spirits like me,’ Lohaniji told us. ‘The minute I walk past a peepal tree, they fall into my lap like raindrops! But not one of them,’ he declared proudly, ‘has succeeded in casting a spell on me.’

  His favourite story was called Jago ho! Main le unyuin (Wait for me!). It was set at midnight, the witching hour of the hills. Lohaniji was returning from his village and walking past a cremation ground, when a khabees (a male spirit with red eyes) started to dog his steps. Every time Lohaniji turned round, the khabees would change into a bull, or a hissing snake, or a dhobi and call out, Jago ho! Main le unyuin. At this point, Lohaniji would imitate that nasal Jago ho! elongating the sound of the ho to send a shiver down our spines. We would scream in terror and beg him to stop. Lohaniji would roar with laughter and say, ‘Stupid children, no spirit can come near this house as long as I am around.’

  Truly, his departure from our house brought all the evil spirits out of the walls. Death, disease, penury—these were the evil spirits Lohaniji had valiantly kept at bay.

  In those days, our house had two libraries: one was my grandfather’s and the other belonged to my mother. In contrast to my grandfather’s collection, which was in the library downstairs, my mother’s library had a vast range of fiction locked away in a wooden glass-fronted cupboard in the room adjoining the veranda upstairs. Bankimchandra, Premchand, Saratchandra, Meghani and all the popular writers in Bengali and Gujarati along with hundreds of Gujarati and Hindi magazines lined her bookshelves. We were a family of bookworms and spent hours devouring books hungrily, sprawled in the sun on the veranda with the sounds of the street filtering in like a pleasant record playing in the background.