Revolt (7 page)

Begum did not wear Mistress Gulbahar’s cast-offs, but velvets in the winter, and in summer her body was caressed by the softest of lawns and silks that felt like
malai
cream, even between her chapped fingertips.

‘Mistress Laila, you have robbed us of our livelihood,’ Begum groaned aloud, gaze fixed longingly on the beautiful homestead. ‘I’m saying goodbye to the
hevali
!’

At home, her faint whisper barely reached Ali’s ears, ‘He knows!’

‘It’s all your fault, you stupid woman!’ Leaping off his seat, Ali vented his wretchedness on her.

Colour drained from Begum’s cheeks, shocked at her husband’s hostility and a fearful thought crossing her mind. Would he actually beat her? Her elder sister’s bruise-ridden body had scarred her youth. And she had vowed that she would never let any man touch her!

‘Ali! You don’t have to tell me what I already know!’ she coldly reminded him, her body rigid with hurt and indignation.

‘Can you imagine what will happen to Chaudharani Gulbahar when she faces her husband?’ Ali taunted, continuing his sexist tirade. ‘You women are all the same – weak, with your hearts ruling your heads!’

‘Ali, you are cruel! You loved Mistress Laila, too!’ Begum retaliated.

‘Just go and shove yourself in a big hole, Begum!’ Ali jeered, hating her sullen tone.

That was the turning point – the moment in Begum’s humble life – that provided her with the answer to their predicament.

‘I don’t need to shove myself in any hole!’ she mocked, standing up tall. ‘I’m a faithful servant and I’ll not run away! I’m going back to the
hevali
. Even if they throw me out, Ali! I’ll station myself outside their front door until they forgive me. And I’ll go on begging for their forgiveness until they do!’

‘Good for you! But don’t come wailing to me later if they send you packing!’ he jeered.

‘Ali, stop being so childish!’ Loftily dismissing her husband, Begum retraced her steps back to the
hevali
.

She had learned something new today; that when it came to a crisis, her husband completely lost his head. And that women were not weak, but men were cowards.

Smiling, Begum cried, ‘On the contrary, we are strong, my silly Ali,’ sidling back into the
hevali
through the servants’ door. It was like a silent mausoleum.

Where were her master and mistress?

Gulbahar’s dull eyes lifted from her husband’s feet and slowly journeyed to his face. His expression signalled everything. He knew. As she opened her mouth, it crossed her mind that she was going to dash years off him.

‘Haider Sahib, your beloved daughter has married the potter’s son.’ They were quiet words, but had a vicious sting. Her husband’s hand clutched the air, fingers reaching for support.
Gulbahar steeled herself for the punishment: the thunder that would pelt her body; the abusive rainfall of sharp words. But there was only a cloying, crushing silence.

Her mighty stony-faced husband did nothing; he simply walked away.

‘Laila!’ An anguished scream rent though Gulbahar’s body. As if in a surreal dream, she dashed after her husband, panting up the stairs to their bedroom door but the handle wouldn’t move.

‘Haider-ji,’ she whimpered, panicking, ‘Please open the door!’

No sound. Gulbahar slid down on the marble floor and resting her head against the walnut-lacquered door she wept. She felt his pain, but hers was sharper. ‘We’ve all betrayed him.’ Gulbahar sobbed into her silk
dupatta
with the hand-embroidered lacework, given to her by the wife of the governor of Punjab as a present when they hosted them in Lahore.

‘Mother!’ Arslan exclaimed. Gulbahar blinked, a large tear trembling on her lower eyelash. ‘What’s the matter, Mama?’

‘Your sister has swept the world from beneath our feet, my son!’ Gulbahar opted for honesty with her young son, but failed to use the word ‘eloped’.

‘What has she done?’ he asked eagerly, unable to make sense of his mother’s words.

Gulbahar debated with herself. He was only young. ‘Your sister has married the potter’s son.’ Gulbahar assessed his face for his reaction. No surprise. No condemnation. ‘He doesn’t understand – he never will,’ she thought, envying her son’s innocence. ‘Arslan, please go and study in your room, my son!’ she advised, before entering her daughter’s room.

There, her eyes fell on her daughter’s picture frame. ‘Laila, how could you do this to your father?’ Gulbahar sat on her daughter’s bed and wept again.

Haider had locked himself in and her out of their bedroom. Gulbahar made dozens of journeys to their door that day and the next day. He had not eaten. Only drunk the tap water from the en-suite bathroom.

‘Please, Haider-ji!’ Begum, too, pleaded outside the bedroom.

‘It’s all my fault, if only I had told you!’ Begum wept on her mistress’s shoulder.

‘You didn’t tell her to elope or get married, did you, Begum? So please don’t blame yourself, my dear. If anyone is to blame, it’s me, her mother. How ignorant I am.’

‘Please, Mistress, don’t blame yourself – we are all at fault.’ The housekeeper offered generously, touched by her beloved mistress’s kindness.

Even Ali’s appeals were ignored.

It was the new kitchen maid in Haider’s household who became the village loudspeaker, clearly letting everyone know about Laila’s elopement with the potter’s son. All waited with bated breath for the volcanic explosion at the
hevali
, wondering what the landlord would do to the potter’s family? Would he track them down? Speculations, speculations, but nobody knew for sure. They all agreed on one thing – that they expected something to happen; some momentous event to erupt in the village that would scorch everything and everyone in its path.

They were in for a mighty big disappointment; the volcano didn’t erupt and there was no village scorching. No chasing after the potter’s family. Begum and Ali were not dismissed or thrown out of their living quarters.

Master Haider had simply withdrawn – from everyone and everything. Even from his family. For it was rumoured that no one had seen him for three days. And of course the rumour of Laila’s elopement soon reached the ears of Laila’s prospective in-laws. The jilted landlord, humiliated though he was, counted himself lucky to escape from such an unsuitable match. No matter how gorgeous Laila was, she had become a
besharm
woman. And all for a potter’s son! Was she deranged?

‘Can you believe it – locking yourself in?’ Massi Fiza teased her best friend, Rukhsar, peering longingly at the new gold necklace set that she was working on.

‘Apparently there’ll be no jewellery for Mistress Laila now! Would any parent give a dowry to a daughter who has disgraced them in this manner?’ The rhetorical question had the goldsmith’s wife’s head shooting up from the rows of rubies she was nimbly stringing.

‘Disgraceful, Massi Fiza!’ she loftily agreed.

‘Be careful, Mistress Rukhsar, you have three daughters yourself. You’ll need to watch them all!’ Massi Fiza slyly reminded her.

‘Oh, I do! I don’t know what our almighty Chaudharani Gulbahar was up to with her daughter. Fancy not even having an inkling of what was going on? These “big” people are so smart in so many things but apparently blind to a daughter’s
izzat
! It’s not as if she has half a dozen children – only two!’

‘Well, whether two or a dozen, children are very conniving these days. Thank goodness I don’t have any daughters to disgrace me,’ Massi Fiza preened.

‘Well, see that your boys don’t “disgrace” you by chasing after girls above their caste and station in life!’ Rukhsar returned equally cattily, bristling at her friend’s aspersion that she had only produced females.

‘My boys are quite sensible – you know what they are like.’ The feeble words did not quite ring true even to Massi Fiza’s own ears. Rukhsar dropped her gaze to her beads. It had dawned on her lately that her friend had a tendency to talk in glowing terms about her sons. As if everyone did not know what good-
for-nothing
sons they were. The realisation jolted through Rukhsar that Massi Fiza was after her daughter’s
rishta!

The goldmistress’s body trembled with indignation, nausea spiralling inside her, pricking her finger with the sharp tool as she poked the hole in the tiny pearl bead. A goldsmith’s daughter was no match for a laundrywoman’s son! The situation was almost the same as the incongruous match of Master Haider’s daughter with the potter’s son. No! Her
ladli
daughters were destined for more ‘elevated’ households, where gold flowed in abundance in the form of gold bracelets, not a home that overflowed with every
Nethu Pethu’s
dirty laundry.

Four months later, heavily veiled up to her eyes, Laila returned with her husband to the village in the middle of the night. Like bandits, they stole into Jubail’s family home, stealthily breaking open the ugly aluminium padlock.

Inside the potter’s home, Laila saw her new home for the first time – a hovel. Everything was caked with dust and cobwebs – the two pillars, the rusty grilled windows, the veranda floor with patches of cement missing, even the washing line. In disgust, Laila withdrew from the kitchen washing area with its
moss-encrusted
water pump and went to inspect the rest of the house. That was it – just two rooms! No proper kitchen or bathroom. She hadn’t quite expected a replica of her parents’ palatial
hevali
, but this humble dwelling, devoid of any modern facilities, a few pieces of shabby furniture and stacks of ugly pots of all sizes littering the place was too much for poor Laila. At one stage, panicking, she was about to run out; and out of Jubail’s life. But to where and to what? Luckily, their Islamabad apartment was far better, rented with the money from the eight gold bangles she happened to be wearing the night of her elopement.

Where would she cook? On that small portable oil burner stove, squatting on a rickety footstool? When she looked around for a rolling pin, her husband cheekily reminded her: ‘What wretched village woman uses a rolling pin to make
chappatis
? Only for
puris
! The first village task young women master on reaching their teens is often the art of making perfect round
chappatis
by hand! There are no Begums in the neighbouring households to help with the cooking.’

How Laila wished she had learned the skill of making soft, round
chappatis
from Begum. This wasn’t Islamabad where they could fetch ready-made meals from cafes. Everything had to be prepared by her hands. And she was in no position to hire servants to scurry around doing her bidding. Shrugging her shoulders, Laila reminded herself that they were here on a special errand – to ask for her parent’s forgiveness and to return home to the
hevali
, where there were plenty of servants to take care of her needs. Jubail had strongly advised her against coming, saying it was too soon. Laila, however, wouldn’t rest until she had seen her parents and asked for their forgiveness. Each passing day had been agony.

‘They can’t do anything to me now. I’m legally married,’ she emphatically told herself. ‘And parents always forgave.’

What Laila hadn’t bargained on was that in her absence her beloved parents had swapped hearts for stones. Tossing and turning on the hard, jute-woven portable bed, she longed for the soft, wide breadth of her queen-sized bed in her family home and wondered how poor people slept on these narrow uncomfortable things. Even with two thick towels tucked under the bedsheet, she knew her back would be sore and lined with the jute-woven pattern marks.

‘I miss you so much, my darling Arslan. I can’t wait to see you,’ she wept, wetting another corner of the pillow. Unable to wait until the morning, Laila crept past Jubail, fast asleep on the other portable bed.

Out in the open courtyard, she stared around in bemusement. ‘This is my new home …’

Her own bedroom in the
hevali
was the size of the potter’s courtyard. Laila crushed the thought; the potter’s wheel was no match for her father’s acres of land and dozens of pedigree racehorses.

Guided by the light of the moon, she located the staircase to the rooftop, semi-hidden behind a tall stack of round-bellied milk churning pots. Her father’s
hevali
, including the rooftop terrace, was elegantly dressed in marble from top to bottom. Half of the potter’s rooftop terrace, used for stacking pots and
portable beds, was brick-lined. The other half had a small heap of coal and a pile of chopped wood to use for the rooftop
chappati tandoor.
No plants, or flowering bushes, or marble floor. Just three old rickety portable beds, one with a missing leg.

Laila had very rarely viewed her home from any of the villager’s rooftops. In fact, she could not recall ever crossing to the other side of the village. The
hevali
was the first building in sight when one entered the village, and she had always travelled by car. Her everyday life had little to do with the local village people. As the daughter of the wealthy landlord it never occurred to her or her parents to befriend the village children. Similarly the villagers shied away; Laila was beyond their reach as a playmate or sphere of influence, even for the ‘fashionable and very modern’ goldsmith’s daughters.

Her reputed friends were daughters of politicians, media celebrities and other landowning families from the boarding school and city college. Her knowledge of the village extended to Massi Fiza, their laundrywoman, who was now practically a neighbour – her front door literally opposite theirs.

‘I have returned home, Mother!’ Laila whispered up to the shining stars.

Gulbahar was standing on her prayer mat, about to start her afternoon prayers, when Begum whispered in Gulbahar’s ear.

‘She’s here, Sahiba-ji!’ Her mistress heard but betrayed no visible sign that she had.

‘She’s here!’ Begum croaked louder.

‘Who’s here, Begum?’ Gulbahar’s harsh voice challenged, turning to confront her housekeeper.

Begum shrivelled, the light of hope snuffed in her eyes, her heart retreating to a low, dull beat. Her mistress had indeed killed not only her daughter in her thoughts, but had also slain her own heart.

‘No one!’ Begum mumbled in confusion, turning away, wondering what was going to happen. For Massi Fiza had excitedly whispered that Mistress Laila had arrived during the night
and was now living in the potter’s home, whilst her rascal of a husband had gone to work in the neighbouring town.

‘She’s here!’ Gulbahar softly repeated Begum’s words to her husband’s back, feeling duty-bound to alert him. Haider was standing ready to say his
maghrib
prayers; he neither replied nor showed any indication that he had heard but merely started his prayer sequence, raising his hands over his shoulders. Gulbahar let the moment pass – at least he was prepared. She had not expected a discussion, as Laila’s name had become a taboo.

The small footstool, with its one uneven leg, on which Laila crouched to make breakfast, kept toppling to one side, giving her a painful stitch at the side of her leg. Her eyes remained on the outside door, expecting her father to storm in at any moment followed by a tearful mother with open arms. Breakfast and dinner was cooked. She had specially made her father’s favourite dish, semolina
halwa
, syrupy the way he liked it.

In the end, nobody came.

No storming father, no weeping mother crossed the potter’s threshold. The second day also passed. Laila’s life swung on the face of the clock and the outside door – waiting. She knew that the
dhoban
had passed the message. ‘Why has no one come?’ she mourned in bewilderment.

On the third day, after her husband had left for shopping in town, Laila determinedly stepped out of her home, an ugly fortress of her own making, daring to walk out into the village lane and show her face.

‘I’m Haider Ali’s daughter and will not hide myself!’ The pelting storm had to be borne. And she was ready both to face the wrath of her family and the sniggers of the villagers.

Her body discreetly cloaked in a large grey muslin
chador
and her face partially hidden behind its folds, Laila stepped warily out onto the cobbled lane. Once upon a time, the elegant Miss Laila would never let a
chador
come anywhere near her body. Now, she sought refuge in its ample width and length.

Her destination was her father’s
hevali
.

As she entered the lane, her heart thudding, she felt faint; her beloved father was walking towards her.

‘He has come!’

Her heart singing, she let the fold of the
chador
fall from her face as he came nearer. His eyes dutifully looked down in a modest fashion adopted by the village men whilst passing women. He therefore didn’t notice or recognise her and was about to pass her; Laila panicked.

‘Father!’ Her urgent voice sliced across the small space between them. A mere flicker of an eye was his only response; the gaze had barely lifted from the ground. Then the head dropped down before his eyes reached her face.

And he walked on, passing her still figure in the lane, staring after him.

‘Father!’ Stunned, Laila shouted after him, past caring who heard her, born out of a need to be recognised and heard. Her father’s feet didn’t stall. The head didn’t turn. She watched his tall stiff figure disappear down the side street.

Mouth dry, Laila leaned against the gate of the bricklayer’s villa, wiping her wet cheeks clean. The bricklayer’s two chattering teenage granddaughters coming out of the house made her briskly walk off.

She had lost the father but still had a mother.

Pushing open the
hevali
gates of her parents’ home, Laila experienced an awkwardness, as if she was entering it as a stranger. Her hungry eyes devoured the spacious beauty of the courtyard, its central marble fountain overflowing with a steady spray of clear water, rows of marble colonnades garlanded with the lush growth of plants and flowers and the two trees now swollen with fruit; oranges and guava. The small pomegranate tree bushes with pomegranates hanging from them were protected from the pecking crows behind the small cotton bags sewn by Begum’s skilful fingers.

Begum herself was hard at work in the courtyard. On her toes, she was reaching up to brush down a tiny row of spiralling cobwebs hanging from one of the veranda colonnades when Laila called.

Electrified, Begum swung round.

The bundle of
boker
sticks with sticky cobwebs slipped from Begum’s hand as she clamped her hand to her mouth, gasping.

‘Laila-ji,’ she whispered, automatically adding the respectful term of ‘ji’ to address her young mistress. Joy flared, fear raged. What would happen now?

‘Begum, where is my mother?’ Laila demanded, hovering nervously on the threshold. Begum’s eyes swept angrily over her irresponsible mistress; the imperious voice didn’t match the pathetic appearance. This wasn’t the fashion-loving, elegant Laila with her fine stitching, tight-zipped dresses, tiny
three-inch
sleeves showing off her slender, youthful arms, the one bred in the lap of luxury in her parental home, but a
weighed-down
specimen of womanhood and symbol of humility.

‘Any other village woman, for that matter,’ Begum mentally scoffed, eyes widening. Did she see lines on Mistress Laila’s forehead? Obviously, the expensive Western pots of face creams and body lotions that Ali purchased for her from the city’s top shopping plazas no longer featured in her life. Her Mistress Gulbahar still had porcelain skin and she was twenty years older!

Seething, Begum climbed up to her Mistress Gulbahar’s room, followed by Laila.

Gulbahar was in the middle of her
zuhr nafl
prayer sequence, her forehead touching the soft surface of the velvet prayer rug, ready to rise to start a new
rakah
. The shallow, hesitant breathing, the light tread of her daughter’s feet on the floor tightened Gulbahar’s chest. When two feet stood beside her, the Arabic words of prayers deserted her, her mouth only forming the words
Ibrahima, Ibrahima.
Bemused, she turned her head first to the right and then to the left to signal her exit from her prayers.

Her eyes fleetingly swept over her daughter’s cloaked figure but avoided the face.

‘Mother!’ Laila beseeched, now squatting, touching her mother’s feet.

‘Please forgive me, Mother,’ she begged.

Alarmed, Gulbahar pulled her foot away. Only two thoughts banged with clarity in her head: betrayal and shame.

‘Begum, have I not warned you about letting beggars into the house.’ The voice sounded chillingly aggrieved. ‘You’ve disobeyed me yet again, Begum!’

‘Mother!’ Laila cried, lying in a heap on the cold marble floor. Gulbahar turned her back to the two women.

‘Begum, please show
this
beggar the door! And guard it well!’ Gulbahar cruelly instructed, mouth quivering.

Begum’s distressed gaze swung from the daughter’s face to the mother’s back. Gulbahar, unable to pray, walked out of the room, heading for the open air and privacy of the rooftop terrace.

Tears streaked down Laila’s face. Begum helplessly watched, before turning to follow her mistress, the words ‘you have disobeyed me yet again’ throbbing in her ears. Yes, she had brought Laila up to her mistress’s room. What had she expected – a reconciliation, a pat on the back? Did she not know that Laila was dead to her parents? How could she allow Laila’s shadow to cross their paths?

As if in a dream, Laila followed the faithful housekeeper down the stairs. Begum’s body language neither signalled her love nor her anger. Her loyalty was to Mistress Gulbahar and Master Haider; her mission now was to quickly usher Mistress Laila out before her father returned home. Striding across the courtyard and opening the door wide, Begum kept her face averted from the accusing glare of Laila’s eyes.

‘Don’t look at me like that!’ Begum taunted. ‘You burned all your boats, Mistress Laila, on that night when you eloped with your lover,’ she angrily continued, with throbbing red cheeks. ‘You killed your parents with your cruelty! Stamped on their joy of life! Snuffed the light out of this house. Did you know that this is the house of the dead, Laila? I never knew that the young mistress I so lovingly cared for could be so selfish and cruel to the very people she loved. Your parents do not mourn for you! Don’t flatter yourself! But I mourn for my master and mistress and for the empty vessels that they have become! What does the potter’s son have that the landlord didn’t – that led you to lose
your female modesty? What did you see in his father’s clay pots that made you turn your back on the casket of gold jewellery and acres of land offerd by the other man?