At Muradabad on the way back the train jerked away from the main line and took us down to Delhi. There the green, virginal Jumna greeted us not as sister of the Ganga, but as it were her daughter, Kalindanandini. Delhi was so sad, with the refugees and the dirt on the streets and the stories one heard of what had happened on the border. Mothers had lost their daughters and fathers their wives, but when the Women’s Commission went to recover the abducted women some of them laughed. ‘Sisters, you call us. What sisters are we to you, oh respectable ones? The Muslims took us and here we are of their harems; they treat us better than the cowards that left us and ran for their lives. Tell my daughter, I am happy. And tell that man called my husband I spit on his face…’
Some women that were brought back had no tale to telclass="underline" they never opened their mouths. They spun cotton, or made baskets at the refugee centres, past thinking. Some had left their fathers behind, some their husbands. Once in a while someone escaped from Pakistan and told tales that could never be heard to the end. Some, too, there were, the true Gandhians, who spoke of the horrors we had committed on the Muslims, and pointed at the fanaticism that led to the sacrifice of him whom we so tenderly called Father of the Nation.
Little Mother naturally wanted to visit the Jumna Ghat, where the last mortal remains of the Mahatma were cremated. She did not weep, she did not even pray. She went down to the Jumna and washed her feet and face. She just could not understand what death was. And yet death was everywhere about — a fanatic shoots a saint, a tiger carries away a peasant woman cutting grass in the fields, or the Muslims kill a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand, on the banks of the Ravi, for their God, they say, is different from our God. It is good, Little Mother must have told herself, to belong to the far south. No barbarian will ever come to us.
The train ran straight down south, and looping through the Vindhyas brought us directly to Bombay. By now Sridhara had too much of travel and he developed a slight fever. Our friends in Bombay — we stayed in Mathunga, and with south Indians of course — were most kind to us. We had a car to go about in, but this barbaric city simply had no meaning for a Brahmin like me. It spoke a language so alien, had a structure so improper, made a demand so vehement and secondary, that one had no business to be there. Bombay had no right to exist. Marseille is certainly horrible, with its wide dark windows and its singsong tramways, its underground world of ruffians, quemandeurs, bicots, and its sheer smelly natural vulgarity; but at least it has the old port and the beauty of Notre Dame de la Garde. Once you go up the hundred and seventeen steps and see the majesty of the sea from the portico of the cathedral the whole of the Greek conquest comes to your mind, and not far from there one can almost see to the right Stes Maries-de-la-Mer, where the first Christians landed in Gaul.
Alas, nobody landed in Bombay but merchants and the vulgarity had no naturalness about it, save it were in the Hindu area, where you almost felt you were back in Benares. Somebody suggested we go to Bhan Ganga, and the idea that the Ganga had arisen even in this unholy territory gladdened the heart of Little Mother. ‘Look, look!’ she cried, showing the sea behind Bhan Ganga. ‘It’s just like Benares.’ Beyond was the burning- ghat, of course, and a little farther away Little Mother and I sat by the sea and spoke of family affairs. She was worried about Saroja and Sukumari. One was seventeen years of age and the other fourteen.
‘You, Rama, though borne by another woman and a blessed soul at that, you are like my own son. But they are different. Their mother was different, too, and they still have strong links with their mother’s family. And after all what am I? A poor court-clerk’s daughter. I am twenty-six, and these girls are already taller than me; they go to school and college and know more than I do. As long as He was there, there was someone to look after the house, and now I ask and wonder what will happen to everything. Night after night I cannot close my eyes, and your cough worries me even more. How can men understand the pained heart of woman.’
In between the smells of the sea there came sudden wafts of incense, as though absence was no more an absence, but just a presence invisible, unincarnate. Little Mother blew her nose, and I said: ‘I am your son. It is for you to say, and for me to obey.’
There was a small clear moon and I can still feel the auspicious sense of the evening. We had just rung the bells at the Shiva temple and had put flowers on the Three-Eyed’s head. The Walkeshwar temple was filled with the smell of sandalwood and camphor. Women were saying prayers in a corner; the sadhus were lost in their sacred books. Little Mother knew I spoke the sacred truth. I could hear her weep into the edge of her sari, gently and undramatically. She put her hand on the head of Sridhara, as though now she was sure he was protected. I can still remember how immediately her trembling voice became steadier. Then after a long while of silence she said, ‘Promise me one thing, Rama?’
‘And what may I promise you, Little Mother?’
‘Promise that we will never interfere in your life. Your Father once said, Rama, “He’s always been an independent child. He never will obey anyone unless he can be convinced. Let him lead his own life.” That was what He said to us again when your letter came announcing your marriage. What your father respected I shall respect, Rama.’
In the car, just as we had left the sea and were going up Malabar Hill, I said:
‘And how shall I be of help — so far away, and with so alien an existence.’
‘Simply by writing to us often; and coming to us every two or three years. So that they know there’s a head of the household, an elder brother; so that the children feel they are protected, and there’s one whom they have to obey.’
‘Well, for marriages and initiation ceremonies!’ I said and laughed.
‘And when Sridhara is big like you he will take charge of the household. Won’t you, you foolish little baby?’ she said, and laughed too. Sridhara was asleep.
It was late when we arrived home, but the prasad of the Walkeshwar temple was wonderful to bring back and we all ate happily, and later the eldest daughter of Venkatasubbayya sang some film songs.
From that evening on Little Mother spoke more simply to me. She would say, ‘Now I must take dates for Sukumari, and chocolate for Saroja,’ or she would talk of Kapila, the eldest daughter, who had quarrelled with Father and had never set foot in the household again. Since she married into a ‘big house’ in Mysore and became a daughter-in-law with golden girdle and diamond earrings her very nature seemed to have changed. She was, of course, my sister, but there was as much in common between us as between jasmine and tamarind. Let the tamarind grow, I said, and become the village-gate tree.
The whole family was at the station when we arrived, including the Other-House people, Seena, Kitta and even Uncle Seetharamu. Grandfather Kittanna, too, had sent us his benediction: I would go and see him the next day. Everybody was happy to see me, and so impressed with the dignity and serenity of Little Mother. She had left such a helpless and broken-down woman — almost a girl — and now she returned with natural dignity. She walked as though space was not something unreal and undependable, but this was her own earth, her own home, her own backyard, with the moon-guava and the well.
Saroja was the first to remark, ‘Oh, Little Mother, you seem so changed. You have grown thinner, but you look more like Brother Rama’s sister than our Mother.’
‘Yes,’ I told Saroja, ‘I have become the head of the family now. And since I must return to Europe soon Little Mother will be my representative, with the power of the baton and the bank account,’