When I think of food, I think of the cat-like way my mother disposes of fish-bones, and eats the head of the rohu fish, meticulously destroying its labyrinths. Here a silent contest ensues, as she chews and bites at it from all sides, till the head disappears and the indigestible bones lie clean and polished on one corner of the plate. At dinner, our leftovers — chicken bones, ribs, the white comb-like tail of the pomfret, which is simple and symmetrical — we deposit upon her beggar’s plate for her to chew and gnash and then blissfully spit out. My father, the most serious person at the table, uses, unexpectedly, a fork and a spoon to eat. He cannot begin till he has been served, and till that moment, remains sombre and paralysed. Once started, he floods his plate with daal, till it has made a yellow lake with white hillocks of rice upon its banks.
12
In the afternoon, Mohan, my music-teacher’s brother, and Sohanlal, his brother-in-law, ring the doorbell. Ponchoo then silently brings out the tablas and tuning-hammer from the cupboard, and the big tabla, shaped like half a globe, he balances between one arm and his chin maternally; the smaller one he clutches lightly but firmly by the strong cords of bark along its sides. Mohan and Sohanlal take a long time settling down, talking in their own language, the latter chattering very fast, while Mohan, a man of few words, sits carefully on the sofa. It is easy to see that Mohan is related to my music-teacher, that he is his brother, because their faces are similar, especially the colour of their skin, Mohan perhaps even a little darker than my music-teacher was. The timbre of Mohan’s voice is also like my guru’s, slightly husky, not loud or deep. Though he may not be aware of it, it is impossible for others not to see my guru come to life, in flashes, in Mohan’s facial expressions, his turns of phrase, and his gestures. But Mohan is an unassuming man, while my guru, shorter and a little plump, was a showoff, doing astonishing feats with his voice and then chuckling gleefully at our admiration. Laughter is drawn out reluctantly from Mohan, who I think used to both hero-worship and self-effacingly humour his brother (he told me once he had turned to tabla-playing because there couldn’t be two singers in a family, and that, when they were both learning the intricacies of vocal music from their father, he found his elder bother much too quick, much too clever to compete with), while my guru, especially when singing, would laugh happily after a difficult taan, and shake with mirth when he arrived at, after much deliberately drunken meandering, the sama, bringing a small, reluctant smile to his younger brother’s lips. On tapes on which I recorded my guru singing in my house, complex melodic leaps and falls performed by him can be heard punctuated by brief chuckles.
When a singer performs, it is the job of the accompanists to support him dutifully and unobtrusively. A cyclical rhythm-pattern — say, of sixteen beats — is played at an unchanging tempo on the tabla, and the song and its syllables are set to this pattern, so that one privileged word in the poem will coincide ineluctably with the first of the sixteen beats in the cycle. This first beat is called the sama, and much drama, apprehension, and triumph surround it. For the singer is allowed to, even expected to, adventurously embark on rhythmic voyages of his own, only to arrive, with sudden, instinctive, and logical grace, once more at the sama, taking the audience, who are keeping time, unawares. Once this is achieved, the logic seems at first a flash of genius, and then cunningly pre-meditated. While the pretence is kept up, and the singer’s rhythm appears to have lost itself, the tabla-player, with emotionless sobriety, maintains the stern tempo and cycle, until the singer, like an irresponsible but prodigious child, decides to dance in perfect steps back into it. Similarly, when a singer is executing his difficult melodic patterns, the harmonium-player must reproduce the notes without distracting him. The tabla and harmonium players behave like palanquin-bearers carrying a precious burden, or like solemn but indulgent guardians who walk a little distance behind a precocious child as it does astonishing things, seeing, with a corner of their eye, that it does not get hurt, or like deferential ministers clearing a path for their picturesque prince, or like anonymous and selfless spouses who give of themselves for the sake of a husband. Mohan, who plays the tabla with clarity and restraint, created the ground on which my guru constructed his music, and Sohanlal, attentively playing the harmonium, filled in the background. In the care of these two custodians, my guru sang and shone with his true worth.
13
Chhaya and Maya would spend the morning sweeping and cleaning and collecting rubbish. Their mother, a towering, mild woman, cleaned the stairs; sometimes, her husband, that pudgy, well-behaved man in khaki shorts, stood in for her, loitering in the compound, decoratively wielding a jhadu. This small family, father, mother, and two daughters, was employed by the Building Society. What they did with the implements of their trade — bucket, rag, water, disinfectant, jhadu, broom — was a mystery. A combination of these things did not automatically add up to cleanliness. From eight to twelve, one or the other of the sisters, bucket in one hand, jhadu in the other, made an independent, breezy tour of each flat in the seven-storeyed building.
Chhaya was the younger one, plump, extrovert, with dimples and protruding teeth. She did no work, but was on good terms with everyone. From time to time, my mother preached to her to study hard and educate herself at the municipal school she never seemed to attend. She was interested neither in work, nor in studies, nor in looking pretty. The things she was interested in were my mother’s singing practice in the morning, and when I would get married. Her older sister, in contrast, was a sensitive, overweight, round-faced girl who was exceptionally dark; she suffered because of this, and worked silently, almost sullenly. She never smiled, even by mistake; she seemed to think it would make her look ridiculous. By remaining silent, she tried not to draw attention to herself, but her very uncomfortableness made one notice her. The few times I caught her eye, she did not look, but glowered, at me. Then, a few years later, after she had passed puberty, she lost weight and gained a figure. Small, dark, and round-faced, she looked pretty when she smiled, a flash of perfect white teeth, something she began to do increasingly. She had obviously discovered that she was desirable to her husband, to whom she had been married, not long ago, when she turned fifteen, a young man in the family who ran a successful butcher’s shop, whom Maya mentioned casually in the same breath with the quality of mutton at the shop. Chhaya, too, began to grow up; her churidars no longer stopped abruptly at her calves, but, elegantly, came all the way down to her ankles; and kaajal appeared around her eyes. But all this, I suspect, was her mother’s and her sister’s doing, and was as external to her as a frame to a painting, while Chhaya, till the last time I saw her, remained the same irresponsible and talkative girl I had known when she was nine.