The Dance of Durga
THE DANCE OF DURGA
Kanika K. Dhillon
HarperCollins Publishers India
For my Father
I lost you last winter, on the eve of a new year.
I wonder if there is any way, to talk to you one more day
And get a chance to say good bye.
To you I am forever grateful. I miss you.
Love you, Papa.
‘What you seek is seeking you’
– Rumi
Contents
Rajjo
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Durga
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
Acknowledgements
About the Book
About the Author
Copyright
RAJJO
1
August 1971, Gurdaspur, Punjab
JASWINDER, pot-bellied, balding and in his mid-thirties, cursed his luck as he frowned at the old lady sitting on the lone wooden bench in the corner of his shop and muttering to herself. She was eating jalebis from a paper cup. It was a busy day. Jaswinder was swamped with work and rushed customers filed in and out of his cramped shop. Furthermore, he had a headache, the stocks of oil and sugar were running low and he suspected his wife was sleeping with one of the boys who worked in the shop.
With all these worries hovering over him, he was in no mood to babysit the old grouch. She sat grunting in one corner with a narrow cinnamon-coloured face sheathed in wrinkles. Contours crisscrossed her skin, etched with the relentless needle of time. Watery eyes peeped out at the world wearily with a tinge of blue. She had cataract. Her lips were no more than a surly dash that moved while she muttered.
‘You rascal, don’t you dare tell them where I am hiding. I have seen you grow up naked on our streets.’
Jaswinder shook his head for the hundredth time, ignoring her ramble and went back to attend to an impatient customer. He barked at his teenage employee, ‘Gappi, pack a kilo of barfi.’
Perhaps he could ask Gappi if he knew which one of these boys was fucking his wife on the sly!
The old woman’s hair was covered with a white cotton dupatta, rumpled with time and age. A few wispy white strands fell rebelliously on the brown face. There was some white hair on her chin. Perhaps that was her licence to be senile.
‘Why don’t you go home, Mata-ji, your son must be worried about you!’ Jaswinder hoped she would scoot soon.
‘Let the rascals worry, they won’t listen to me, they won’t believe me, they won’t let me name my granddaughter! Here, give me some more!’ She stretched out her cup assertively to be refilled with the sugary sweet.
Jaswinder feared the old lady, easily ninety-plus, if not more, would die in his shop from a sugar high, but what he feared more than her dying in his shop was that she would create a scene in front of the customers. He better refill her cup. He was going to whack Gappi for allowing her to sit here in the first place.
‘I told you not to entertain her,’ he told Gappi.
‘She said she was dying of thirst, so I gave her water and she wanted to sit and drink it. Now you are serving her sweets!’ Gappi’s accusatory tone irked him.
Jaswinder gave the insolent boy a stare. Gappi was getting too big for his boots!
Rascal!
The old woman’s nasal voice rose. ‘The idiots don’t get it! I saw Goddess Durga in my dream a week ago! She said I was going to have a granddaughter soon, name her after me!’
Jaswinder rolled his eyes, ‘Next time she pays you a visit, just ask her what colour should I paint my shop walls so that it will turn out to be auspicious and increase my sales!’
Gappi and a few patrons tittered and that enraged the old woman.
‘You rascal!’ the old woman spouted in anger and turned her beady eyes to the customers in the shop. Wagging her index finger she warned them, ‘Don’t take his sweets, he reuses the oil and the houseflies have nested on his ingredients.’ Saying this and muttering profanities, she slunk out of his shop.
A patron, almost ready to bite into a succulent creamy pedha, stopped midway.
‘You will see, she will be Durga, and she is meant for great things!’
The customer eyed the old woman as she dawdled away. With a jaundiced eye he studied his sweet. A radio played a Punjabi song somewhere inside the shop.
Jaswinder cleared his throat, ‘Don’t mind her, she is senile. So you were saying, three-kilo barfi, and two-kilo jalebi? Should I get them packed?’
‘No, actually, I am not sure, I will just confirm with my wife and get back.’ The patron scurried out, not wanting to look at Jaswinder but clearly a little put off by the old lady’s insinuations.
Jaswinder abused the old lady under his breath. ‘Next time that old hag saunters into the shop, just shoo her away!’ He ordered the lanky teen, Gappi, who was least bothered with what was going on between the master, the old lady and the patrons. He wanted to get it over with and go fuck the boss’s wife whilst he was ostensibly helping her with chores. She gave him nice food after the sex. Bliss!
The old lady continued her jabbering all the way to the end of the lane, annoying Jaswinder no end. It made the boy smirk. Thankfully for Jaswinder, she turned the corner and he could breathe a sigh of relief.
Just then a worried-looking man, Kartar, in his early thirties, robust and well-built, wearing a white crumpled kurta over his lungi, entered the shop. His turban was half done and beads of sweat glistened on his face.
‘Sorry, have you seen my mother, Veerji, she has run away again!’
‘Yes! She has gone that way! And why don’t you keep her chained! She is a menace!’ Yelled Jaswinder as the son, Kartar Singh Kahlon, sprinted out of the shop, hoping to find his absconding mother in the bustling market.
The two men searched for the old women in all the places she usually ran away to. Kartar hoped he would find his mother in one of the small shop units around Hanuman Chowk, or on one of the benches in a dingy sweet shop in Kabootri Darwaza. Streaks of worry and anger marred his face. His wife, Saroj, was due to deliver any time and the constant bickering between her and his mother over the past week about naming the unborn child had left him in a thunderous mood. And there were bikes and cycles piled up in his repair shop to fix. He also needed to make another trip and drive a delivery truck to Himachal and back that would cover the extra cost expected to be incurred during the baby’s delivery. He knew his wife was barely managing. He needed to hire another puncture repair boy. Perhaps he could ask one of his friends. If only he had a son, instead of two daughters, he could have him do the odd jobs here and there.
Kartar focused his tired eyes on the busy, narrow streets. Wares from shops encroached upon the already narrow lane, making it difficult to walk down. Fabrics in bright yellow, apricot, indigo and sapphire hung along the street. Ladies in colourful suits milled about as men towed cartons on handcarts and rickshaws. There was no sign of his mother.
‘Why has she run away now?’ asked Moga, his friend and neighbour, who was an electrician by profession and worked in the fields for additional income. Moga was fair with green eyes. People always wondered where the lightness came from, given both his parents were on the darker side with eyes as black as soot. Moga tried to hide his lightness with an ample beard that was also brown in colour. He was referred as ‘Bhoora’ (the one with light eyes and light beard) by the villagers mockingly.
‘She and Saroj are bickering again! I want to kill myself! She had a bloody dream where some goddess came and told her Saroj will have a daughter and to name her Durga. Saroj insists she wants to name her Rajjo or something!’
‘Durga!’ Moga rolled the name around his tongue, testing it. ‘Strange.’
‘Is that the only thing you find strange in all this?’ Kartar rolled his eyes, sweltering in the heat, looking up at the sky hoping for some mercy and rain. The crops and grounds were parched and dry. The rains were delayed and the unease was growing.
‘Can she ask the goddess next time she meets her if I am going to have another boy next time around?! Or are we getting any rain sometime soon. I am worried!’
But Kartar was gone in a jiffy, running after an old woman and almost picking her up from behind, screaming. ‘Biji!
What the hell is wrong with you?’
The old woman turned and whacked Kartar repeatedly. She was clearly not his absconding old mother.
‘Don’t you have mothers and sisters at home! Outraging my modesty on the road!’
Kartar, slightly taken aback by the response, cleared his throat and added sheepishly,‘I thought you were my mother. Sorry!’
The old woman squinted at him ‘Is that the line these days!’
He could hear Moga laughing behind him all the way to the rickety bike.
Biji was sitting by the side of a busy freeway at a lone dhaba, overlooking a carpet of green fields. Her nose twitched. Armed with a dismal face and a woeful expression, she hoped the gaunt sweaty man frantically baking rotis in the round tandoor would pass her some.
The bloody fool useless son of mine hasn’t been able to find me yet!
She was hoping Kartar would look for her here, as the last two times she was found sitting on this road. She was tired and hungry now. Their house was another twenty-minute walk away and Biji was in no mood to do the trek. They lived in a small village near Dhaliwal. Biji usually escaped to Gurdaspur city if she got bored or wanted to hide from the family. She went back to ogling the man baking rotis in the tandoor.
Perhaps the sweaty bugger hasn’t seen me.
The old woman crawled closer to the guy. She could smell the freshly baked tandoori rotis. The man did not even pause to glance at her. He wore a singlet, his clammy shirt discarded. One hand crudely tied in reams of cloth was acting as a baking glove. He was feverishly taking out hot, crispy breads that a helper was plating and rushing to the main kitchen inside.
Biji coughed to announce her presence.
Asshole, look up once at the old woman dying here!
She moved closer. Biji could almost peep into the tandoor, a circular mud structure with bread stuck to the sides turning light hazel and fluffy with the heat.
‘Go away!’
The man muttered without looking up.
‘You dog! One loaf of bread is not going to kill you! I had a dream that my granddaughter will be born tomorrow. She will be named after Goddess Durga and all of you will be chanting her name! Better still, I will come as a ghost in your dreams when I die, and scare the living day lights out of you!’
The man, unperturbed, continued slapping fresh flattened dough inside the tandoor walls and removing the round, baked, brown ones.
Biji tried a fainting spell, and immediately the man flung a fresh piece of roti her way.
‘I am not carrying you to the hospital.’
‘Why must you make me faint then … and only one! You miser!’ Biji straightened up.
While Biji was wondering if she could wheedle a couple more for her two little granddaughters at home, and perhaps one for that surly daughter-in-law Saroj, she saw her son with that fair neighbour Moga trailing behind.
These buggers with light eyes can never be trusted! Bloody Bhoora!
Biji had to do the fainting spell again, so they would put her in the rickshaw and take her home. She hid her roti in the little cloth bag hanging on her thin gnarled hand and with a move perfected over two decades, fainted.
Kartar and Moga rushed over just in time to catch her.
‘What now?’ Moga wondered
‘At least she will not be eating our head on the way back!’ muttered Kartar as he collected his mother in his arms, cradling her like a child.
‘She has taken a roti from here, you wanna pay up?’ The cheeky man baking the bread commented.
‘Bastard! You can count your rotis when God takes you to hell!’ Biji erupted like a volcano shaking Kartar who almost dropped the terror from his hands. Biji directed her wrath towards the surprised son.
‘You better hold on properly to me! Tomorrow Durga is coming, I want to die after I see her face… You hear me! And that’s what you name her Durga, else I am not coming back home with you!’
At home, Saroj was hoping they would not find her mother-in-law until she had delivered her baby. She was a ravishing, tall woman with pale skin and amber eyes. Biji constantly remarked over her pale complexion, wondering where it came from and insinuated Saroj’s grandmother had taken a lover. She was sure it was the handsome foreign student who had come down to complete some project in the village. He smiled at everyone in the village and offered the pretty girls sweets. Biji had her eyes on him but Saroj’s grandmother had swooped in on him.
Saroj was convinced Biji was the devil incarnate, sent on earth to torment her. She sat on a high stool with a swollen belly. The sweat trickled down her back and her little hand fan didn’t do much to help. Kartar had also put a small table fan in the open kitchen where Saroj cooked the meals and everyone sat around to eat in a corner of the courtyard. The kitchen enclosure had a raised muddy platform with a stove. Steel utensils, blackened with heat over time, piled up on each other and struggled for space. The entire house was a mix of brick and mud.
A pot simmered on the stove as she tinkered with the wood and burnt cowdung used as fuel to cook with. She went back to chopping the vegetables but it was uncomfortable to even sit on the stool. The smoke was becoming unbearable for her. She stirred the broth one last time and covered the pot to simmer. Her two little girls – Rano, aged four and Reet, aged five, sat giggling next to her, lost in their own world, playing with the tea set made from mud that she had bought at a fair last year. Half the set was broken.
As Saroj shifted her weight again, she hoped the old fusspot was wrong and it was a boy. Even if it was a girl there was no way in hell she was going to name her Durga.