When my mother’s brother married Waheeda, and brought her home to meet his parents, my father moved out of the house where we stayed with my maternal grandparents.
My father was a union member and carried the party card. His friends referred to him as Sakhaavu Rajan. But I knew that he voted for the Congress in every single election. He kept hidden in his old army suitcase a black and white photograph of Indira Gandhi and a colour photograph of Rajiv Gandhi. The day Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated, I was sitting at the dining table, eating watermelons that my father was chopping up for me. The moment the radio carried the news into our living room, he stopped doing the watermelons, threw the spoon whose back he was using to scoop out the seeds and went into the bedroom. He came out only in the morning and refused to meet anyone's eye; his own was bloodshot.
Waheeda maami as my uncle asked me to call her, was a Kutchi Muslim. An abomination, a disgrace and a scandal of the highest order in the extremely orthodox, very pious, unexplainably proud Hindu upper caste family of mine.
My grandmother and her sister Baby, who also lived with us, went to meet with a Swami near Guruvayoor, when once the word of my uncle's intention to marry Waheeda was made public, and came back with thick red and yellow threads that they tied to each door and window that faced North. I was busy learning to crochet in my Work Experience classes that year and was always on the lookout for any string or thread I might put to good use. The red and yellow string in Baby’s hand was different to the monochrome threads I was used to and when I had the chance I tried to nick a length to add on to the square of crochet in my hands. But I hadn’t even begin to unravel the first knot when Baby descended on me.
“Po po” she hissed, smacking my fingers that were engaged in loosening the tight ball of thread, making me take a step back in alarm. Her eyes softened a little when I stumbled back and she continued in a low voice,
“It was to ward off the evil from…from the north” she finished, a little lamely.
Baby's real name was Susheela. She was once claimed to be the most beautiful woman among all the Hindu Nair families in Cochin. She was the youngest among fourteen siblings, the favourite of her nine brothers. No alliance for Baby received her brothers' approval. Each alliance was sniffed at, dissected, and ultimately left to rot on the dunghill of their disapproval. Either the family was not good or the groom was not good looking. If the groom was handsome, the brothers decided that he was a lotus eater content to live off his family's and later Baby’s income. If both the groom and the family passed the nine brothers’ intense scrutiny, the horoscopes didn't align. Baby went on acquiring degrees after degrees. A BA in history, a Hindi Bhasha Praveen, a diploma in home science and a diploma in typing and shorthand. She had also learnt the Veena and was considered a good player, even if not very talented. Over the years, none of the proposals from prospective grooms matched Baby's standards. And then, surprising herself, at the ripe old age of twenty eight, Baby declared that she did not want to be married after all.
She went to live with her eldest sister, my grandmother, and helped in raising her six nephews and nieces. Baby was steadfast in her love and dedication to my grandmother, whom she called Babyechi. Apparently when Baby was just a toddler, my grandmother used to keep referring to herself as Baby's chechi. Baby ended up calling my grandmother Babyechi. The two Baby sisters ruled our family and in front of them, no one stood a chance of winning any argument. By the age of twelve, I had grown taller than both Babys. This was more a testament to the Babys slight figures than my own inconsiderable height. Slight in size, but formidable in the length of their tongues and their staunch support of each other, no one dared cross either of the sisters.
So when Waheeda came home, the two Baby sisters announced that the Swami had instructed the family members to never speak to Waheeda at all. In fact, he had also advised them to go without speaking for the entire length of Waheeda’s stay at our home. But since silence was torture to the two sisters, they conveniently ignored this part of the advice. But they did believe it when the Swami told them that the evil from the north was very potent and that nothing could stop it from coming. So they decided that the south would put up a strong defense.
My father, who came to live at my grandparents’ home after his marriage to my mother, had come with two army trunks and a rosewood cupboard. Inside the cupboard were many notions that he was forced to quickly dispel. Chief among them, was his ideas about women. His own mother and his elder sister were the type which my mother begrudgingly referred to as “vaayil kayyittaalum kadikkilla” referring to their extreme meekness. Since she had been widowed early, my achamma, or my father’s mother, always relied on my father for any direction or help. His eldest sister had been married off to a large family in Quilon and hardly visited her maternal home. My father had therefore ruled as the head of his tiny family consisting of him and his mother for a good thirty years before he married my mother and came to live in her home. Here he realized that not only was he not the head of the family but that he had to cross three levels of security clearance-- the two Baby’s and my grandfather--to actually be allowed to do anything at all. The two Babys took all decisions at home and my grandfather believed in the motto “first obey; then question'' something he had told me with a wink in his eye when my grandmother was setting him out at eight at night to buy a 100 grams of mustard seeds from the shop around the corner.
Meekness and docility when it came to the Babys was forsaken for being loud, vigilant, opinionated and completely visible. When my parents left for their jobs in the morning, my mother riding pillion on my father's green Chetak, they were sent off by the two Babys sitting on the front steps, lavishly oiling each other's gorgeous thick black hair. When the rest of us spoke Malayalam at home, the Babys and my father spoke to each other in sarcasm and double edged words. But on Waheeda's count, the two Babys received surprising support from my father, who on hearing that my uncle was bringing Waheeda home, packed a small briefcase and went to live at the government guest house near the school where my parents worked; my father as a Maths teacher and my mother as a history teacher.
My mother refused to move out and go with my father to the guest house. I don't know what reason she gave for not going, but she stayed put. But I also know that she went to the guest house in the morning and the two of them went to school together just like they always did. If anyone asked questions, my mother might have silenced them with her sharp tongue and her big round eyes from behind the brown rimmed spectacles. It was how she successfully silenced me anyway.
I was enchanted by Waheeda. She was forbidden fruit. But she was also very unlike anyone I had ever seen. For one, she was fair like the whole lot of us were black. We weren't really. You could say we were a deep shade of chocolate brown, but next to Waheeda, we could be soot black. I touched her arm furtively while she sat on the cane chair in the living room and found it to be buttery soft, making me ashamed of my mother’s oily slick hair and rough arms. While my mother had always looked beautiful to me before, she now looked positively ugly next to Waheeda. Even the younger Baby, who still looked resplendent in her fifties couldn't help stealing glances at Waheeda from time to time. Once I caught her trying to sit like Waheeda did, with her ankles crossed and tucked in neatly under her. When Baby lost her balance, I snorted and she scowled.
Till Waheeda, I had believed that husbands and wives had to have similar names and the same professions. My father Rajan married Rani, my mother, and both of them were school teachers. My mother's eldest brother Kumaran married Kumari and both of them worked at the bank. My mother's elder sister Swarnalatha married Suresh and they ran a music school together. My grandmother Indira married Induchoodan and they had also been school teachers. But Waheeda married my uncle Gopi and while my uncle was an engineer, Waheeda was a lawyer. I had thought that this was the big problem. The reason why my family was in uproar about my uncle's marriage to her. But then the younger Baby explained to me the day before my uncle was to come home with Waheeda.
“They are Muslims and they eat meat. One look at her mouth and teeth and you will understand”.
I had a very vivid image of a rakshasi with blood dripping from her pointy blood stained teeth. I shuddered. Enthused, the younger Baby continued.
"They speak Hindi.''
If this was supposed to intimidate me, all it did was relax me.
"But Baby ammumma, you can then speak to her, maybe sing her some of your hindi songs."
Baby who loved Rajkumar and Saira Banu and was the Rashtra Bhasha Praveen of our family however stood up in a huff.
"If you think I am going to breathe the same air as her…."I waited for her to finish, but she got up and walked out in a huff.
Waheeda had the pinkest lips and the most beautiful set of teeth I had ever seen in my life. Her voice was soft and she always had a smile on her face, even when she knew that she was despised by everyone at my home. My uncle adored her. He was always taking her to the town to watch movies and have dinner. I was the quintessential third wheel. The elder Baby had ordered that I go with my uncle and Waheeda, while the younger Baby stood nodding her head vigorously in agreement. Since no one questioned the Babys, I tagged along, everywhere. In retrospect, I think I might have been sent as a spy. But my James Bond skills were seriously lacking. All that the outings ever achieved was me falling in love with Waheeda. It was one the first outing that my uncle asked me to call her ‘maami’. When I faithfully reported this back home, along with plot details of the movie we watched (Kuch Kuch Hota Hai) the Babys seemed to consider the name. Till then, they had not ever referred to Waheeda by her name. It had always been pennu, woman. A title they also gave the chechi who came to sweep and mop our home. After my revelation however, Waheeda was always kochinte maami. Kochu being how I was called back then.
Waheeda came home every year with my uncle during Onam. The second time they came home, my father didn't stay at the guest house, but took his meals in his bedroom. The two Babys still largely ignored her, but stopped leaving the room when Waheeda walked in. The third Onam, Waheeda and my uncle came with their three month old daughter Saira. The two Babys gushed over the baby and remarked that she looked just like my uncle Gopi when he was her age. I could only see the similarity in my uncle’s almost bald head and the baby’s completely bald one. By then, I had always been partial to Waheeda and desperately wanted a little sister of my own. So, when I saw Saira, to me, she looked a little like Waheeda, but even more like me.
I was in my seventh standard when I woke up one night to the sound of the telephone ringing in the living room. Night calls were never good omens and I was right. My uncle had lost both his legs at a freak accident at the manufacturing plant that he worked in. My grandfather and the two Babys rushed to Ahmedabad to be with him.
That was how Waheeda, Saira and my uncle came to stay with us. Once a happy and jovial man, unperturbed by his family’s disappointment at him and rage at his wife, the accident had turned my uncle angry and bitter. Waheeda's beauty angered him, he couldn't bear to look at Saira. Once, he threw hot tea all over Waheeda's face, hysterically squalling that he hoped it would scar her face.
The two Babys screamed at my uncle like they had never even shouted at my father, whom they did not like, let alone respect for being my mother’s husband. And from then on, my uncle was served only cold teas in plastic cups. Eventually he gave up drinking tea. I think that might be what killed him. One day, about a year after they had come down to stay with us, he didn't wake up in the morning. I overheard my father telling the people who came to offer condolences that it had been a heart attack.
My father kept asking my mother about Waheeda going back to her home now that she had no reason to stay back here. Of course, my mother never bothered answering him. So he told me to ask Waheeda, since I had taken to be her shadow and spent hours playing and talking with her and Saira. I was twelve and slightly less stupid than before, so of course I didn't ask her. But I did ask Saira who looked broken-hearted that I had even asked.
In the end, it was my father who built a new house and the three of us who moved out. Albeit to our new house which was right behind my grandparent's house, in the plot of land that my grandfather had given my mother.
Waheeda never left. She made aviyal better than my mother and she spoke Malayalam, Hindi, Gujarati, English and Urdu. She did not practice law, but worked as a clerk in one of the law firms run by one of my grandfather's students.
If she was bitter, she never told us. If the two Babys had once hated and despised her, no one would believe it now. I still believed that Waheeda should have married a Waleed or a Wahim or even a William who was an advocate. She could have had a better life.
That was Waheeda's fate.. maybe. Nice read!!