The Wheel of Surya. Jamila Gavin
my day, to discuss and make plans. Most of all, I could do with a good accompanist. I get tired of the sound of a solo violin, and God knows what these people make of it. I can get hold of a piano, you know . . .’
‘Get hold of a piano,’ Dora wrote back at last. ‘I’m coming!’
Now, standing here, thousands of miles away on an Indian verandah Dora smiled, remembering her incredulity and joy.
As she relished her own happiness, she wondered about Jhoti swooping up and down on Harold’s garden swing. She began to feel linked to her in some peculiar way. While she and Harold were being married in All Souls Church, Jhoti was having an arranged marriage to Govind in her village down the road. When Dora became pregnant, Govind told Harold that his wife, too, was expecting a baby. They both produced girls, although Harold remarked, ‘I don’t think Govind will be half so pleased with a daughter as I am.’
Suddenly, feeling both amazed, yet strangely perturbed, Dora realised that she and Jhoti were both pregnant again at the same time. She watched the young girl as she stopped swinging, heaved Marvinder off her lap and stood up, smoothing out her tunic.
She curved her hands round her stomach and, for the first time in her life, felt that she wasn’t entirely in control of her own destiny. Her happiness gave way to melancholy.
As Jhoti and Marvinder moved slowly round the back of the bungalow and out of sight, Dora felt two arms clasp her round her knees.
‘Mummy. Swing. Let’s go on Daddy’s swing.’ Little golden-haired Edith, still tousled with her afternoon’s sleep looked up at her with demanding blue eyes.
‘No, baby.’ The ayah came and extricated her. ‘Leave Mummy. I’ll swing you.’
‘That’s all right, Shanta. I’ll do it.’ She took Edith’s hand and jumped her down the verandah steps. They walked, the two of them, along the winding path, between the carefully created geometrical flower beds which Harold had carved out of the red earth.
Suddenly Dora was gripped by an overwhelming sense of helplessness; a feeling of plunging downwards as in a bad dream, without power, without knowing where and how and if she would land. She stopped in her tracks as Edith ran on to the swing. She felt afraid. If after all, one had no power; if there was no such thing as free will, that everyone was simply part of some divine purpose, then how could she control anything? How could she protect her child or plan for the future? Perhaps nothing she did amounted to anything, because it was all pre-ordained anyway.
The ayah squatted on the verandah watching her. Dora felt uncomfortable. What was she thinking? Did she mind serving this white foreign woman, who had the audacity to come and claim ownership of this land; who expected to be in command and who claimed superiority in all things just because of an accident of birth?
Suddenly, rarely, Dora was overcome with homesickness. ‘England.’ She spoke the word out loud. She turned her eyes westwards, beyond the compound gate, over the long, white road, on and on over the fields of mustard seed aflame with yellow flowers, till her eye settled on the simple, rounded oblong shape of the Hindu temple. The sun was halfway down the sky, and by nightfall would set just behind the temple.
Impatient with waiting to be pushed on the swing, Edith came running. ‘Come on, Mummy. Push me. Come on.’ She tugged her mother’s arm.
‘Edith,’ Dora said, picking up her child. ‘Do you see that temple far away over there, where the sun is beginning to drop through the sky?’
Edith nodded, putting her thumb in her mouth.
‘If you could go over there, and keep on going west, do you know where you would come to?’
Edith shook her head, mystified by her mother’s strange mood.
‘Edith, you would come to England. England is over there, and one day, I’ll take you.’
‘Swing, Mummy, swing me!’ Edith wriggled out of her arms and forced her mother to put her down.
Unsure how to quell this sudden sense of desolation, Dora took a few moments to fight back her tears. Then with a bright shout, she called out, ‘Hold tight now! I’m coming to push you!’
‘Aloo, okra, baigan ho,
Chaaval, Channa, Bhoona lo.’
Marvinder sat in the earth repeating her rhyme over and over again. She scooped up soil with her newly acquired tin and poured it into the bottom half of a broken clay water pot which she had found near the village pond.
‘This is for Ma, this is for Pa, this is for Ajit, this is for Chachaji . . .’ she went on listing all the members of her extended family. Every now and then she glanced across to a door of a side room, where her mother was the subject of quite unaccustomed attention. Women had been going in and out all morning looking worried. Even fierce Grandmother had an air of concern about her.
Marvinder felt confused and afraid. She had never before been kept away from her mother and every now and then, she heard her mother give a shuddering cry which struck Marvinder to the heart with terror.
‘Aloo, okra, brinjal ho,
Chaaval, Channa, Pani Lo.’
She repeated the rhyme over and over like a magic spell as she dug and dug into the earth.
One of her aunts suddenly emerged from the room, pushing back the broken bamboo blind, allowing Marvinder a snatched glimpse inside. Jhoti was lying on a bed, her head thrust back, her hands gripping the edges of the thin mattress on which she lay. The heat of the day and the struggle of childbirth brought the perspiration pouring out of her body and, as one aunt wiped her brow and mopped up the moisture which trickled in rivulets down her face, another had a goblet of water, and holding her like a child, held the rim to her lips so that she could drink and drink.
‘Aunty, Aunty! I want my ma!’ cried Marvinder, leaping to her feet. ‘Can I go in now?’ She clutched at the tunic of an aunt who had emerged from the room. She was one of the younger ones, Shireen. She could be kind some times, and when she had a few moments between jobs, would often become girlish and run out to join the children in their games.
‘No, baba,’ said Shireen gently, and she picked up Marvinder and lodged her on her hip. She affectionately smoothed back a straggle of hair which had fallen across her eyes. ‘You must be patient. Your ma is soon going to give you a brother or maybe a sister and if you get in the way, it will make it all the harder for us to help her. Do you understand?’ Marvinder nodded silently and Shireen put her down again near her precious tin and broken clay pot. ‘Play now. I have to go and find Basant,’ she said urgently, and set off running.
Some older children who were just coming in from school heard Shireen, and couldn’t resist coming to tease Marvinder.
‘Is Basant coming to see to your mother? Oh dear. Basant is a witch, didn’t you know?’
Marvinder looked up at them with large, terrified eyes.
‘A witch?’ she exclaimed with a shudder. ‘What do witches do? Will she hurt my mother?’
‘Witches come out at night and go round looking for people so that they can suck their blood,’ said one child sticking out his fingers at Marvinder, as if they were claws.
‘Witches cast spells on babies about to be born so that the baby comes out with two heads, or with a devil’s tail or sometimes with horns, and the babies are witches too, and suck their mother’s blood. Whooo . . .’ and the child lunged towards Marvinder making sucking noises with his lips.
Marvinder backed away with horror. ‘Will Basant do that to my ma? Will she do that to my baby?’