Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? by Anita Rau Badami

Author:Anita Rau Badami [Badami, Anita Rau]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical
ISBN: 9780307375292
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2006-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

When Bibi-ji entered Pa-ji’s office to discuss Jasbeer, her husband was watching the news on his private television. Beside him on the small table was his favourite double malt Scotch whisky, which he preferred to drink neat. This was something that Bibi-ji did not approve of. She believed that drinking alcohol equalled drunkenness and, as a practising Sikh, Pa-ji had no business imbibing any kind of liquor. But Pa-ji had airily pooh-poohed her doubts and criticisms.

“This is just to loosen me up, my honey, so that I can be a lion in bed!” he had teased the first time she had objected, hooking his arm about her waist and pulling her down on his lap, his alcohol-flavoured breath making her wrinkle her nose. “I have it in person from the Upper-Wallah that it is okay to take a peg or two once a day. Do I get drunk? Have you seen me lose control? No. Then why are you bothering me about it?” He had cradled his glass of Johnny Walker against his barrel-chest and laughed. “This is my friend. It kept me warm for many years before you came into my life, my jewel.”

In the end, as a concession to her, Pa-ji gargled heartily and chewed a teaspoon of anise seeds before coming to bed, and she had to be satisfied with that.

Now he looked up, surprised to see her in his office at a time when she preferred to be curled up in bed with a stack of magazines. He patted the spot beside him on the couch and she settled down.

“Listen ji, there is something we need to talk about,” she said. “Jasbeer has done some naughtiness at school again. They sent a letter. We have to go and meet that principal person, Longfellow or Longman or something.”

“What did he do this time?” Pa-ji asked, his tone indulgent. Like Bibi-ji, he could not easily bring himself to be annoyed with Jasbeer.

“He took a kitchen knife to school. He said he wanted to be like your father.”

A guilty look crossed Pa-ji’s face. Bibi-ji narrowed her eyes at him and asked in a sharp voice, as if he were Jasbeer, “Does this have something to do with your history business, your pictures-of-ancestors story? What ideas have you been putting into his head?”

Pa-ji looked acutely uncomfortable. “A few days ago he wanted a kirpan, like the one in my father’s photograph.”

“Your fake father’s photo,” corrected Bibi-ji.

“Yes, madam, if you wish to put it that way,” Pa-ji said. “But I told him that it was worn only by baptized Sikhs, that even I did not carry one. I promise, Bibi-ji, I did not encourage him.”

For the first time Pa-ji had an inkling of the trouble that he had perhaps started with his youthful fictions. He had believed then, as he did now, that a man needed such a thing as a history. Without history you were nothing, a nobody, one of those fluffy seed-heads floating in the summer breeze, unaware of your origins, careless of your destination.

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