Life Among the Scorpions Page 11
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At our Anantnag bungalow, electricity was minimal and the government staff were insular and slightly sullen. We had one room and a bathroom, with just a window sill on which to place our books and a small electric stove. The watery potato curry provided by the government cook needed to be supplemented by whatever I could cook on that narrow ledge. We could not afford non-vegetarian food with the miserable Rs 550 monthly salary of a junior IAS officer. Ashok had no car as he was only the Additional District Commissioner on probation so he went to office in a tonga. He couldn’t maintain much of his dignity when once a goat took a ride under the tonga seat, and stuck its head out suddenly from between his legs. However, some of the people who had to wait outside his office for an appointment in those days were Makhan Lal Fotedar (later Indira Gandhi’s powerful secretary), and the late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, who became home minister of India in 1989, and later chief minister of J&K, twice. It was embarrassing to discover that even a very junior officer had the power to keep local politicians waiting for an appointment according to the IAS’s scheme of things.
Daily life there was spent amid women in burqas, empty conversations about children or cooking, and tentative walks alone with the dog. The men had their work and badminton in the evenings. At the dak bungalow, I had to carry buckets of water from the end of the garden to our bathroom while the male staff looked on cheekily from a distance. Propriety demanded I go out in public only with women.
There were no bookshops in Anantnag. Even the occasional bus trip to Srinagar led us to a dim, poorly stocked bookstore. The low-voltage lights made reading tough anyway. Khalid Ansari, elder brother of Hamid Ansari, later Vice President of India, was the deputy commissioner of the district. His, in many ways lovely, wife Khadija, welcomed me when I carried a bundle of clothes to iron at their house across the road. Her delicious kababs and gentle affection made up for my otherwise restricted life. This was the only home I freely visited since they were from Hyderabad and were not conservative in their ways.
In Anantnag, which was otherwise a dusty old town with only make-do provisions and nothing to define itself, I discovered the fascinating wooden lathe work in which the artisan cuts tiny bangle-like rings on the outer part of a wooden baton without separating the wood from the original piece. The wood is coloured on the lathe in red, green and silver. These became baby walkers, cradles, charkhas, ladles and rattles. Such rare and special craft skills were never propagated in the way more expensive and ornamental crafts were. They often died from want of recognition or attention because they were made only for the ordinary people and not the elite.
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Secretariat life for many years meant packing the entire house to the last light bulb for the bi-annual up-down transfer known as ‘darbar move’ from Jammu to Srinagar, every six months. This expensive and disruptive arrangement was put in place to balance the administrative and political interests of both regions. As juniors, we were allotted the dregs in housing and government furniture. We got chairs that had gaping holes in the seats where the cane weave had worn away. Our tiny semi-detached cement house in Gandhi Nagar in Jammu had such a small bedroom that only two charpoys could fit in it. When it rained, we carried an umbrella to the Indian style toilet located beyond an open courtyard.
The Jawahar Nagar government colony in Srinagar was not a very different story. Its bath was just a plain room with a cold cement floor, a single tap, and no washbasin or shelves. We rigged up a wooden plank dismantled from one of our wooden trunks as a shelf with an enamel basin and jug as seen in films about medieval England. We had one immersion rod and two tin buckets for hot water.
In this grim place, I had a risk of a miscarriage and was told to lie still in bed with my feet up to prevent it. However, on a sunny May morning, as is known to happen often in Srinagar, a sharp and fairly severe earthquake forced me to hop out of bed, run downstairs and jump out of the ground floor window as the front door had jammed. I lost the baby.
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In 1967, we had our son Akshay, who was just three months old when Ashok was promoted. Posted as Deputy Commissioner of Poonch District, right on the border with Pakistan, his salary jumped from Rs 550 to the royal amount of Rs 1500 per month. There was nothing to buy except basic daily necessities brought by the cook, and so it did not matter. Poonch was a thirteen-hour jeep ride from Jammu, much of it on hilly roads through deep forests. If rains flooded culverts on the way, it took longer. We had to wait by the side of the road till the water receded. At such times, I breastfed my infant son behind a bush in isolated wilderness.
People were used to elderly Kashmir Administrative Service officers arriving on a posting in Poonch at the end of their careers with just a tin trunk and a bedding roll because of its proximity to the insecure border with Pakistan. Senior officials were geared to packing their bags and running if there was an attack from across the border. Poonchis were shocked to see a couple still in their twenties arrive with a newly born child and thirteen trunks of luggage of which eleven contained books, and the rest, kitchen utensils and household items. We didn’t look as if we planned to leave in a hurry. If I went walking to the post office to mail a letter the news spread immediately, since wives of senior officials didn’t do such things. Moreover, people in the bazaar who had not seen Ashok, would ask me discreetly whether the new DC Sahib was my ‘Papa’. Since he had started balding prematurely by then, he wasn’t amused.
An anecdote that stands out in memory when speaking of my life in Poonch surrounds the additional district commissioner (ADC) who was an elderly official from the state service, used to accepting a bribe or two on official visits to far-flung villages even if it was in the form of a hearty roast chicken for breakfast. Once, he was accompanied by an introvert Malayali IAS probationer who had been sent to train under Ashok. As they reached their destination, breakfast was offered as usual. However, the ADC discovered it was late and there was no time to have the chicken roasted. He solved the dilemma by ordering that the live chicken be put in the back of the jeep to take home. The greatest delight of the IAS probationer’s life was his devilishly gleeful description of the incident, especially of what happened on their journey back, when the chicken managed to save its life by flying right out of the back of the jeep!
When I took Akshay for a ride in a pram every evening along the golf course-cum-helicopter strip below the DC’s house, local kids would join me in a ragtag procession taking turns wheeling the pram or carrying him. Army officers told us that soldiers posted at the Pakistani and Indian pickets overlooking the golf course watched our little evening procession through their binoculars. The pickets were located on two heights separated by a narrow valley known as Naiwali Gali because a barber (or nai) shop was located there. This shop served as a peaceful no-man’s land where soldiers of both armies would lay their arms down and chat about their families while having their routine haircuts.
The DC Kothi was a vast double-storeyed old haveli. Most of it was completely useless for comfortable living, but we had electricity for four hours in the evening. There was also only one air cooler in that entire house. Our only entertainment there was to sit in a special ‘box’ to watch B-and C-grade Hindi films that came to the cinema hall just below the front gate. We watched every film of Dara Singh’s, wrestling his foes, and Helen’s, wiggling her hips. If parts of a film were particularly entertaining, the jawans in the hall would cheer loudly. The operator in the projection room would take the cue and promptly rewind the film to show the scene again to another roar of approval from the audience.
I longed to go on tours with Ashok to Bhimber Gali, Surankote, Bafliaz, Mendhar and other areas of the district but he was stuffy and self-conscious and refused, saying there were no curtains in the dak bungalows where he would stay. Consequently, I had to remain home, often bored to death, practically in purdah because there were none. There were many picnic spots, forests and beautiful quiet lagoons alongside the Poonch River. For a twenty-five-year-ol
d officer, however, the heavy responsibility of dispensing justice at and administering this very remote—in fact the smallest—strategic border district, while negotiating contentious situations between the army, police and civilians along the Line of Control, was an entirely new terrain that left little taste for pleasure.
Two years later, when we were shifted to Jammu, we were finally able to afford a car. The Premier Padmini cost Rs 21,000. We took a loan of Rs 19,000 from the government and made up the rest by borrowing from parents. Even though I got my driving licence in Washington DC in 1961, I actually got to drive properly only on the narrow crowded lanes of the Jammu bazaar. The DC’s wife driving on her own and strolling in Raghunath Bazaar to eat samosas from a roadside vendor bordered on the sensational, if not the outrageous, for the traditional officialdom of Jammu in those times. I did of course manage gamely to do all the ‘wifely’ things like taking part in cooking demonstrations, playing tombola and dancing the gidda (a dance form from Punjab) with some officers’ wives at the club. However, in my heart of hearts, it was an unsatisfactory forms of ‘time pass’. I went to the local arts academy to learn sculpture and had a woman come to the house to teach me how to use a sewing machine just to avoid the urge of sleeping on hot afternoons and wasting time. I felt that it was far better to occupy myself in a useful manner by overcoming my ignorance of how to stitch garments, and by cultivating my artistic interests by creating sculptures.
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Our Garhwali cook’s wife Sundari had two small baby boys born in quick succession in Jammu. I had to stand by her side during the deliveries in the local government hospital since she refused to go back to her mother’s home for them. She had not been pregnant for many years and thought that by coming to live with us, she had somehow been blessed. It was scary having to take on the responsibility of overseeing a baby’s birth when I was young myself but it didn’t seem as if I had an option. Both times, I had to hold the newborns’ tiny, slippery bodies while the hospital staff did other things. The children slept in our bed and were fed on my lap along with Akshay.
At sewing class, I learned to make baby clothes. For practice, I created ‘baba suits’ for them all out of the same length of cloth. Since the boys would be dressed in the same way, most people thought all three were mine and began commenting on why I was having so many children so frequently at such a young age. Understandable, I suppose, since I was visibly expecting my second child.
A Rh-negative blood group problem required my pregnancy to be monitored in Delhi through regular Coombs tests which assessed the number of antibodies building up in my system. In January 1971, a strange thing happened. When I called the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) to ask for the results of the last test, they quoted a frighteningly high reading on the telephone but said they would not give it to me in writing as it was very alarming. My gynaecologist was shocked at this and had me admitted to the Holy Family Hospital immediately. A caesarean section was done and my second son came into this world, only to leave it twelve hours later on 30 January because of extreme anaemia. The antibodies in my system had destroyed his red blood cells and it was too late to save him through transfusions. One of the worst, to say the least, feelings in the world is when a parent loses a child. Relatives immersed the tiny shrouded body in the Yamuna, as was supposedly the custom with newborns, while I lay bereft in my hospital bed listening to healthy infants crying in adjoining rooms. Every year as the sad anniversary arrives, I have an irrational concern which flashes through my mind, but only just for a few moments: that my baby must be feeling very cold there, in the water.
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Soon after, Ashok was posted to Ladakh with a slightly senior designation of Development Commissioner. It was considered a hardship-posting, so the cook’s family had to return to Garhwal. It was difficult leaving behind the two small boys, and Sundari who was shy, loving and hard-working. This angelic woman had left her infant son at home all night to be with me at the hospital when my own child did not survive.
Years later, when she came to Delhi to visit us and stay with her brother who was in the police, she walked out of his quarters in broad daylight on Parliament Street and disappeared forever. There has never been any explanation forthcoming from anywhere for this completely strange act. For many years, I looked for her randomly and even drove to the eastern Delhi border when I got a message that a deranged woman was found answering to the name of Sundari. I reached the police-post at midnight only to find out it wasn’t our Sundari. Later, I sent a picture of Sundari to the daily lapataa (missing persons) programme on Doordarshan but we never found her. Since then, the sight of deranged women living on pavements is deeply troubling, especially when imagining the abuse and indignity they suffer with no power or understanding of how to prevent them. Meanwhile, this story remains without closure.
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In the early seventies, the Government of India did not permit tourists in Ladakh. There was the army, Ladakhis, Kashmiris, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) and civilian officialdom. Despite the intensity of cold in this high-altitude desert, we fell in love with the vastness of the mountains, and the expanses of desolate landscape occasionally disturbed by a moving figure climbing up a sharp slope or riding across the plains. The colours on the mountains moved like a kaleidoscope as the sun and clouds moved across them. Places like Zoji La, Khardung La, the Pangong lake and a host of distant monasteries became a part of our new world. A jonga ride over the frozen Indus River to Demchok, the last outpost before China, where the Election Commission had to set up a polling booth for the two inhabitants in the village, became a part of our travel destinations. We visited monasteries on ponies. There was no suitable school there, so I taught our three-year-old son Akshay at home. I also visited schools as part of my duties as a DC’s wife. The local newspaper once reported, ‘The DC’s wife visited a local school where she wiped the noses of small children even though she was born with a silver spoon in her mouth.’
Speaking of spoons, I recall this very old and wrinkled woman called Ama Malo who would sit in the sun on the rooftop of her little hovel in Leh, known famously to grumble and mumble at everyone who passed below. She was an institution even though no one paid her any attention. Her curses were treated as routine greetings. Like many Ladakhis, she kept a steel spoon in her pocket. She would use it for her meal after which she would wipe it carefully with a cloth and put it away in her pocket to conserve precious water. Every day, as it became dark and chilly, she would climb down to her little room to sleep alongside her pet goat, but climb back up as the sun rose to start cursing the world. One day, word reached me that when she wasn’t heard cursing, someone went to enquire and found she had passed away in her sleep, next to the goat. I decided to go to her funeral, which consisted of four pall bearers, six urchins, two street dogs, and myself. She so fascinated me, that a few years later I wrote a snippet about her and sent it to The Times of India in Bombay which published it. I received a letter from the editor expressing appreciation and asking for more ‘middles’ of this kind. I took it as a huge compliment.
I visited local pashmina centres, strolled through the Leh bazaar admiring gigantic cauliflowers and turnips from the rich fertile soil, brought in from the fields in baskets with malchang, the local willow woven by women. Visits to Ladakhi households meant lazy afternoons, warm, glass-enclosed ‘sun rooms’, and the soft-spoken graciousness of their hospitality expressed through repeated servings of gud-gud chai. While I loved this salted butter tea churned in a long wood and brass tube, most outsiders hated it.
Underlying the calm air in Ladakh was a quietly expressed antagonism towards the Kashmiri population who the Ladakhis felt was unduly spoiled. They had taken over most businesses in Leh and seemed aggressive compared to the soft-spoken Buddhist ways. They also objected to having development plans being formulated in faraway Srinagar or Jammu by a government that did not take them to be part of their own. This gave rise to the demand for the Autonomous
Hill Development Council of Ladakh which became a reality much later in 1995.
Ladakh was too magical not to be shared with the world. As Development Commissioner, Ashok wrote to the Home Ministry recommending removal of restrictions of travel for Indians and foreigners, which finally bore fruit. It made Ladakh a truly magnificent spot on the tourist map of India and many Ladakhi homes opened up their rooms to provide guest accommodation.
The creation of Bangladesh in 1971 while we were in Leh—with the famous laying down of arms of the defeated Pakistani army coming across the radio, and Indira Gandhi’s role in this historic incident—was the high drama in our lives. Our sense of patriotic pride, contained within one warm room in faraway Leh, expanded manifold. Ashok had to travel the district and stayed in the dak bungalow in Kargil over which missiles flew all night. In a cold room warmed by a bukhari (a coal-burning stove) in front of which my son took his daily bath in a tin tub, we listened to history unfolding and our four-year-old learned by heart Pakistan’s surrender dialogue, commands conducted in the presence of Lieutenant Generals J.S. Aurora and A.A.K. Niazi. We went back to temporarily darkened windows while the usual civilian flights to Leh from Chandigarh stopped because the A-12 bombers reverted to wartime duty, stopping supplies of newspapers, bread and other provisions that were not produced locally. We were neither frightened nor worried. All things were simultaneously normal and abnormal as we had learned earlier, and life in J&K was a constant adventure.