Cracking India by Bapsi Sidhwa

Author:Bapsi Sidhwa
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Published: 2010-09-10T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Playing British gods under the ceiling fans of the Faletti’s Hotel—behind Queen Victoria’s gardened skirt—the Radcliff Commission deals out Indian cities like a pack of cards. Lahore is dealt to Pakistan, Amritsar to India. Sialkot to Pakistan. Pathankot to India.

I am Pakistani. In a snap. Just like that.

A new nation is born. India has been divided after all. Did they dig the long, long canal Ayah mentioned? Although it is my birthday no one has time for me. My questions remained unanswered even by Ayah.

Mother makes a disappointing little fuss over me that lasts for about three minutes. She wishes me happy birthday and kisses me and instructs Imam Din to make sweet vermicelli with fried currants and almonds and hands Ayah a cup of milk afloat with rose petals to pour over my head before my bath.

Father hugs me, asks how old I am. I tell him I’m eight. (Yes, time has flown forward. It will fly back yet.)

“Good, good,” says Father absentmindedly. He doesn’t even say, “You’re a big girl now,” as he did last year. I hang around him feeling bored, while he sits on the commode absorbed in newsprint.

I go to the kitchen and announce my birthday. “So what?” says Adi, resuming his unseemly clamor for the sugar bowl. Imam Din and Yousaf say: “How nice. How nice. Greetings, Lenny baby.” But they are preoccupied. Ayah hauls me off for a bath. I have to remind her to douse me with the milk-and-rose-petals.

It’s the same at Godmother’s. I get hugged and kissed, but insufficiently. Godmother is busy in the kitchen. She moves to and fro, looking like an upended whale in her white sari with her sloping shoulders and broadening torso and the sari narrowing round her ankles. She has the same noble bearing and alert, accommodating air of that intelligent mammal. As she moves to and fro, Godmother directs a nonstop stream of instruction and criticism at Slavesister. Just so’s to keep her on her toes and in fair working order. Besides, Godmother is in a hurry. Left to her own assessment of priorities and speed, Slavesister can bog down to a stop.

“Have you soaked the rice yet?” Godmother enquires. “After you’ve soaked it I want you to knead the chapatti dough. And I told you to tighten the cot strings yesterday... Did you? Well then, you may have the pleasure of sleeping on it tonight! Give yours to Manek! Will you hurry up? Half the day’s gone,” says Godmother, briskly putting Slavesister through her paces. “If you don’t pick up your feet you’ll cut off my nose! Manek will be at our door any minute! I hate to think what he’ll tell Piloo about the disorder in this house... And I haven’t even started preparing the halva for him.”

Dr. Manek Mody is married to their middle sister, Piloo. Despite the loudspeaker in his throat, he is easygoing and genial and hardly the type to tattle to his wife about a disorderly house.

I am hurt.

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