Seven Summers Read online

  I cultivated Godu, the regimental carpenter, who was a friend of my eldest brother Harish, a short, stocky, snub-nosed hillman who looked like a Gurkha. While he repaired the furniture of the Sahibs’ bungalows and joked with me about when I was going to get married and what I would do to my wife when I got married, I sat for hours at his doorstep, giving him naive answers which he used as the basis of other jokes, while I tried to persuade him to make me a wooden sword. I would mess about with his tools through the sudden surges of creativeness that welled in me. He would rap me playfully on my knuckles with his hard fingers or suppress me with a loud word and then give me a mug of tea from the dirty black kettle which was always simmering with a mixture of milk, tea-leaves and water on an iron tripod and warmed with a fire of wood-shavings. And, of course, he always made fresh promises that he would start work on my sword the next day.

  ‘Don’t go and eat or drink anything from the hands of those two sepoys and menials, don’t go wandering about,’ my mother preached to me when I came home. But I never followed the maxims laid down by my elders at this time of my life. I went wherever my fancy took me, wandering all over the barracks, the regimental bazaar, the followers’ lines, on the track of all kinds of adventures, and stayed prattling to whomsoever talked to me. What happiness there was in those contacts for me, lonely as I was! What ecstasies of delight I enjoyed when I was given those small gifts of sweets and fruits and toys! How much kinder and more prodigal in their generosity were these humble, poor sepoys, workmen and untouchables than my own parents, who regarded themselves as their superiors and always forbade me to touch anything belonging to them! Certainly I learnt a great deal of what I know now from these people, the gift for making things, of telling a tale as well as making tea, and all my manhood was built up on the experiences of these irrelevant moments spent in truancy.

  One afternoon, however, an accident happened to me which was to put an end to my enthusiasm for such company, if not for ever, then at least for some time.

  Some of the English subalterns of my father’s regiment used to prowl about the Buner hills across the river bed and by the low walls round the barracks, shooting pigeons and sparrows with their sporting guns and the indigenous catapults which seemed to fascinate them as a device for killing birds.

  With that natural warmth which I had in my bones, and my particular curiosity and admiration for the Sahibs, I would run to any of them if I saw one about. And most of them were very kind to me, smiling in their distant manner and letting me, or the other regimental children, follow.

  But one day I saw Captain Cunningham, the ‘Bola’ or deaf Sahib, as he used to be called, walking along by the low wall behind the gymnasium with a catapult in his hand.

  I salaamed him and followed him, for I too was ambitious to learn to use the catapult and to hunt like him.

  He made as if to raise his arm and said ‘Jao’, but I merely stared at him, thinking that he meant to dismiss me lest I should disturb the birds he was going to shoot.

  As he began to walk away, I followed him.

  The afternoon was very hot. Perhaps the Sahib was oppressed by the heat, or perhaps he was irritated by a child following him stubbornly against his orders.

  As he entered the empty stretch of the river he turned round and shooed me as if I were a cat.

  I was stupid and still followed, thoughtless, though rather frightened.

  He went a few steps and then turned and stamped his feet.

  I capered across the hot stones, baked red by the sun’s rays, and was going to take the pathway leading to the door in the wall by the regimental office, but having gone a few steps I stared back at the retreating figure of Cunningham Sahib.

  Apparently his patience was exhausted, or the heat had touched his head, for he shot a stone at me with his catapult which caught me in my arm.

  I ran shrieking and frightened to my father’s office.

  One of the orderlies on the verandah fetched my father, who was very angry that I had come up to the office crying, as some of the Sahibs were still in the office and he was afraid that they might hear me.

  But I cried, terror-stricken, and said that Cunningham Sahib had thrown a stone at me.

  My father would not believe me and lost his temper and, with the pent-up fury of months of chagrin at his own misfortunes and at this awkward incident in which a Sahib was involved, he gave me a resounding slap on the face for making a nuisance of myself.

  ‘Mother, mother,’ I whined as I stared weakly and blankly. My father saw the mark on my arm and was affected. He picked me up and laid me down on the orderly’s bench while someone brought me water to drink. Another orderly soaked a rag and wrapped it round my head. But I cried unceasingly. One of the Sahibs came out and caressed me, while my father talked to him in English, something about Cunningham Sahib.

  I was borne to the nearby regiment hospital and my arm was dressed.

  When I was brought home my mother was frantic with rage and sorrow. She beat her breasts as if I were dead or dying.

  ‘What can one do?’ my father said patiently.

  ‘But what had the child done?’ my mother asked.

  ‘Cunningham Sahib says he stared at him … Of course, the other Sahibs say that the “Bola” Sahib is mad,’ my father assured her.

  My mother thought that perhaps Gurdevi, or the wife of a bania in the regimental bazaar, had done black magic on me.

  After this accident, there happened another which nearly deprived me of the chance of survival in this world and confirmed my mother in her belief that either my stars were completely bad or the Goddess Kali was bent on wreaking her vengeance on our family for some sins we had committed.

  It was on a summer afternoon.

  The scorching Indian sun had kept up an intense glare since the morning and the barren, rocky landscape lay under a heavy sulky haze, contradicting all thought of shade. Beneath the dreary hills surmounted by a sullen grey, upon a vast stretch of desolate plain, the boys of the regiment played, baked almost red by the sun’s angry flames.

  A line was drawn across the dust and a team of five stood on each side to enact the war game, Kabadi. A member of one of the opposing teams would cross the line at the bidding of Chotta or Bakha, who were the captains of the respective teams, and then he would invade the opposing territory as the horse in ancient India crossed from one state into another, the symbol of the challenge of war. ‘Kabadi, kabadi, kabadi,’ he whispered continuously, and the success of his attack lay in his capacity to strike a member of the opposing party dead by the dagger thrust of his arm or the sword nourish of his leg: his failure was signified by the capture of his body by the opposing hosts and by its arrest till he lost his breath and ceased to repeat the word kabadi.

  I had been seated at the head of the line on a huge hot stone, aiding the invading member of each team with the encouragement of loud shouts. I had forgotten that the boys, especially Ali, the bandsman’s son, and Ram Charan, the son of the washerwoman Gulabo, had been hostile to my participation in the game either as a player or as a referee, because, as usual, they said I was too small, and I had blissfully ignored the fact that I was a self-appointed judge whose verdict no one asked for and whose encouragement no one heeded. Nevertheless, I sat there intent on the game, and everytime a boy advanced to invade the opposing territory, I shouted myself hoarse, aiding and abetting him and sometimes moving my body as if I myself were venturing out, with loins girt, eyes alert, and under my breath the incantation ‘Kabadi, kabadi, kabadi’.

  My mother had come to stand in the doorway of our house for brief moments to watch us at play, almost like a mother dove standing on the edge of the nest to see that her chicks came to no harm; and, as she quietly contemplated the desert landscape of the drill-maidan and then withdrew, she was vaguely concerned about me and Ganesh, for she called us to come home from the burning earth or at least not to play there barefooted.

  ‘Come, child, come Krishna,’ she repeated her call
to me for the twentieth time as she looked at the blazing sun and noticed its terrible raging oppression from the shade of the hall door.

  But I did not stir, being rapt in the vigorous fight of Rehmat Lilian, the armourer’s son, who had been caught in Chotta’s camp but kept reiterating the sign of life, ‘Kabadi, kabadi, kabadi’, from the inexhaustible resources of breath he seemed to have, and refused to die.

  ‘Come, Krishna, come on now, son,’ my mother cooed again. She had apparently seen one of the big boys in the Kabadi field struggling and straining under the weight of the four others, and she vaguely feared that I might be crushed if the crowd rolled to one side should the imprisoned boy throw them away.

  But Rehmat Ullah ‘died’ for lack of breath. Then he sat up, retreated to one side and the game was resumed, the captains of the opposing teams, Bakha on the one side, and Chotta on the other, having arranged their teams in readiness for the next invasion.

  I ran back to reassure my mother that I was all right, but not finding her there, and hearing the magic word, ‘Kabadi, kabadi, kabadi’, uttered again, this time by Ram Charan, I returned to my seat on the boulder and became absorbed in the breathless spectacle of a new adventurer suddenly overpowered by the enemy.

  ‘Foul, foul!’ Ram Charan cried in chagrin as he was caught. ‘The sweeper Bakha has no right to catch me. He is a bhangi and he has polluted me.’

  ‘Ja be salé!’ Bakha protested, coming to stand on the line and driving him back from his ground.

  ‘Arré Choté, come and help me,’ Ram Charan cried as he resisted Bakha’s pressure. ‘Let us drive him away, the dirty bhangi! My mother has already asked me not to play with him, the illegally begotten!’

  ‘Shut up,’ Bakha said.

  Upon which Ram Charan picked up a stone and hurled it at Bakha. Bakha ducked and the stone fell sharp and clear on the back of my head as I sat on the boulder.

  I reeled and fell. The blood was pouring from my head and I began to weep at the sight of it.

  Aware of the awful thing that had happened, Ram Charan, Ali, Chotta and some of the other boys ran away, leaving Ganesh, Bakha, Rehmat Ullah and his younger brother Ismat Ullah by my side.

  Bakha had no scruples this time, as against the occasion in Lahore cantonment, in picking me up in his arms, while Ganesh ran home to fetch a bowl to receive the blood that was flowing from my head.

  My sudden cry had brought my mother to the door.

  ‘Hai hai!’ she wailed, beating her breasts and her forehead, almost as though she were demented by the sight of me and through remorse that she had not forced me to come home while there was yet time. And she hurled abuse at all the boys who were behind me.

  ‘Vay, may you die, bad ones, for hurting my sons. Vay, may you die for polluting him, vay, Bakhia—and you for not protecting him, Rehmatia!’

  ‘But, mother, it was not they, it was the washerwoman Gulabo’s son, Ram Charan, who threw the stone!’ said Ganesh.

  ‘Ja, vay, eater of your masters,’ mother shouted. ‘And don’t plead for the mushtandas! As for you, let your father come home and he will break your bones for you … Hai, my son, my son! Oh, the blood, it is pouring in streams! What shall I do? Why did he go to play with these wretches?’

  ‘Give him to me even if I have to bathe,’ she said to Bakha.

  The sweeper boy handed me over with tears in his eyes.

  In a burst of anger, fear, resentment and remorse my mother dug me in the ribs and shouted, ‘Why did you have to go and get hurt, wretch, why did you have to go and bring this new affliction on the household?’

  I was terror-stricken and wept more bitterly than ever.

  Ganesh applied the brass pot to where the hot, red blood gushed from my wound in fitful jerks and trailed on the earth like hibiscus flowers.

  As mother took me in and laid me on the charpai the blood rushed like a torrent and covered all the clothes.

  ‘Oh, what curse against your birth has prospered, in our ruin, son, what sin of ours?’ she cried in a frenzy of desperation.

  Then she turned me upside down and the flow of blood seemed to be interrupted.

  She fetched a piece of cloth and bandaged my head with trembling hands. But already a basin full of blood lay before her and the sight of it enraged her, made her mad. She cursed and wept and beat her breasts, while I whined as I lay on the charpai in the courtyard.

  My cries had awakened baby Shiva. So she went to him, while Ganesh fanned me.

  I was delirious and turned my head from side to side, till a darkness seemed to come over my eyes, and the next thing I remember was that I was in the regimental hospital, surrounded by hooded men and the smell of medicines and the sound of steel instruments. And then I recall the feel of my father’s strong arms as he picked me up in his arms and laid me on the cot. In the serene and sumptuous orchards of the night my anguished cry was still a groan …

  For a month or two my life was despaired of. The sharp-edged stone had penetrated the back of my skull about half an inch deep; the haemorrhage that had followed the blow, as well as during the operation, had drained all vitality out of me …

  Then an acute fever gripped me and I lay in a delirium, with the asphyxiating smell of medicines which oozed from the bandages round my head. A stale taste descended from my dry palate to my parched throat and I moaned as the waves of weakness swirled through my head, invoking my mother’s protection with cries of ‘Hai Ma!’ Since she was not always at hand, I lay staring blankly at the rafters in the ceiling and at the whitewashed walls. At times the pain became very acute and my throat seemed to be choking, or I merely fainted with the weakness. So I was continually being lifted from the bed and lowered to the ground, according to the Hindu custom which enjoins that the dying person should not be allowed to die in bed but lowered to mother earth before the last breath, for from dust you came and to dust you must return.

  I seemed to have a strong enough hold on life, however, somewhere in my bones. For as I was carried to the operating table from time to time and Colonel Bailey, whom I had often salaamed by the regimental hospital, leaned on me, unwrapped my wound and probed it with a long needle and dressed it, I lay fear-stricken but patient, as if with the fear of death before me I had ceased to be a whiner.

  My perceptions of the life around me had suddenly become very acute, and through the dim veil of weakness I could clearly see the gravity of people’s faces, as, through a glimmer of light in my palpitating head, I could understand my mother’s face, covered with guilt for dealing me blows after I had come to her hurt. And as I lingered in bed, I apprehended the days of still more harshness to come when, my privilege as a sick child having expired, I would be accused of having created difficulties for the family, when I would be struck with redoubled vigour, even as Ganesh sometimes was, with hands, cricket stump and hockey stick … But in those moments I remembered the look of genuine concern in my father’s eyes when he carried me to and from the hospital, and my mother’s sorrow, and I hoped they would forgive me for my crime. I could hear the sound of my mother’s voice weeping by my side, the echo of some distant voice calling me by my name. And thus my pity for myself became a kind of pity for my parents, and I accepted my fate with a kind of negative love and forgiveness for everyone, though I could not forget the physical hurt.

  Gradually, however, the life in my bones asserted itself. I would, for instance, raise my arms to wrest the cruel, shining knives and forceps from Colonel Bailey’s hands. They had hurt so the last time my wound was dressed, I remembered. And this time I had decided not to let them be used on me. I would prevent the surgeon from applying the long slide till an anaesthetic had to be resorted to.

  Helpless under the gas, my brain wheeled and fought imaginary battles with an imaginary knife. One of these aberrations I still remember vividly: A dark, ugly witch with flashing white teeth was coming towards me as I sat by a steaming cauldron. I felt that she was going to throw me into this sizzling pan by rolling me, as I had gr
own very strong and heavy, across a board. But I was determined that I would dodge her and, putting my leg across her as the sepoy wrestlers did to their adversaries, throw her into the cauldron instead. She was coming. There, I had caught her. Heave, push, strain and lo, I had toppled her over into the pan. She was frying in the grease. And I laughed but—‘There now, you will be all right,’ Colonel Bailey was saying in his queer Hindustani. And the stretcher was being brought to the table, and sleep was creeping into the pupils of my eyes … And I woke later to find my mouth parched, my nostrils dilating, my heart beating eagerly, my eyes exploring the room to find someone to touch, to contact, to hold. I was beginning to conquer Death.

  ‘Mother, hai mother,’ I called as my dependence on her increased so as almost to be maudlin—inevitable at the time.

  ‘Yes, yes, my child,’ she petted as she came and bent down on me, all her tenderness melting, all her love and pity flowing out in a gesture of hope mixed with fear. ‘What is it, then? What is it?’ she said with a pout.

  ‘Water,’ I murmured always, for it was the end of hot summer and of days of fever.

  My mother invariably gave me hot milk that made me sick. But I was grateful enough. Especially at such moments, when I know that she was neglecting Shiva to come to my side, I felt I should never love anybody as much as I loved her, for she had not slept for nights when I had been near death and had never opened her lips except to utter: ‘May I become your sacrifice!’

  Lone woman, untaught by fate, susceptible to the greatest joy, as she is to every kind of inward tumult, moving in narrow circles, cowering in her submission to a ready-made idol, she does not break when she is struck by something overpowering, but stands like a rock! Unaccustomed to absorbing much within herself, as does man’s more expansive spirit, she yet defends her offspring even as an animal does! Only the child can comprehend the mother’s courage and sorrow. That is why in order not to trouble her with further importunities, it quietly goes off to sleep! It is not strange that the elemental relationship of mother and child persists among mankind, in spite of its dangers, when many other primaeval instincts have been refined into knowledge and shame.