posted June 25, 2008 10:42 AM         

THE MAD AUNT OF KASHMIR

Mad Aunt loved children only they would never come near her. They would not because of the children she already had – her three dog-children who would constantly bark at us children whenever we would go near her house, as though in perpetual possessiveness of the love of their ‘mother’, too afraid to share it with anyone else. Sometimes when she would lull them or tether them, she would draw a mustache across her mouth with charcoal and chase us around her house. She was a constant source of fun for us. We would play hide-and-seek in her house. I vividly remember the place I would often choose to hide: I would lie down flat beneath the sofa in the drawing room and shift the adjoining table to cover it, something which would indicate to her my presence and she would find me. When she would shift the table and peeping beneath the sofa say, ‘boo!’, I would giggle with ecstasy.

Insurgency started in Kashmir in ’89. As a result, the Indian army was deployed in our town in the early nineties. The Indian army soldiers would patrol our streets all day and keep a strict vigil. They were apparently for our protection. But they would also built bunkers in the hill that overlooked the town, and ceremoniously shoot at people moving down below in the streets. Mad Aunt would every morning count the army vehicles coming in the town in their long serpentine convoys. She would make lewd gestures at them without fail and her dogs would bark too. The soldiers would be indifferent to her but occasionally, a soldier would remark something back, to which, infuriated, she would raise her hands to the heavens and curse the soldiers. Locals would laugh at her but only to cleverly underplay her remarks and to take the sting out of them. Although she was not afraid for herself, they were afraid for her.

She would say in Kashmiri, ‘If you hurt my children (her dogs), the mountains will close on you. Gulzaras banayiwe khar, su myon Rab’ul Alimeen (My God will turn the flower gardens into thorns for you).’ And, ‘the hills will explode under you.’

My father told me that Mad Aunt was very close to God. He told me that she was once a very good wife. But she never had any children. Her husband died of an incurable disease. But those close to their family knew that his heart was broken because of their childlessness.

Although she was friendly to me, my sister and other children in the neighbourhood, she was not in talking terms with my father and his friends. We were Hindus who had crossed the border during Partition in ’47, and settled in that town ever since. She would look at our parents with a wary eye. And since the death of her husband, she had kept the whole community at a distance. She had lived her own life. They would say that since her husband’s death, she had grown haughty and proud. It was then that people had begun to call her ‘Ishq Cheetin’ or the One Torn in Love. During some periods which we would call ‘her spells’, she would even reprehend us children and deeply hurt us with her cutting remarks. She would say in Kashmiri, ‘Little Devils! Get out of my house!’ We would then not talk to her for weeks on end and forget about her. Then she would send for us with the message that she had made too many shish kebabs which had to be eaten. The mere mention of shish kebabs would make us forget all our grudges and head back to the familiarity and warmth of her house. She could not as easily make up with her other neighbours so they would talk only very little or not at all.

On my insistence, father once accompanied me to her house and while we played hide-and-seek, Mad Aunt and my father sat in the drawing room and apparently exchanged only pleasantries and kept mum. She did not say anything probably because she did not want to insult my father in my presence. Even as a small boy, I quietly understood the dynamics of their relationship, and decided not to ask my father to accompany me to her house again.

My father told me later that day that they had in fact talked. And they had talked after a very long time. It was only when he had been a small boy that she had talked to her more often, but when he had grown to be an adult, she had stopped talking. She had said to my father, ‘You look more like your father each passing day.’ Father told me that she had served him shish kebabs, which were so tasty that he had insisted giving her in return anything she asked for. Mad Aunt had replied saying that she would think for a day and give her answer. And for that, we had to visit her again the next day.

So, all properly dressed, I, my sister and father went to Mad Aunt’s house the next day. Mother had made gulab jamuns(1) for Mad Aunt since she always insisted to never go empty-handed to anyone’s place. It was visiting Mad Aunt that afternoon that the sight of the camellias that formed the hedge in her small aangan(2) got imprinted in my memory and continues in my recollections to be the pictorial symbol of my childhood. Mad Aunt opened the door and greeted us saying, ‘Adaab’. I and my sister fondly replied ‘Adaab’ properly gesticulating the Islamic greeting, and were overlooked smilingly by the two elders present.

We sat down at the sofa and Mad Aunt and father started talking. The knot that would perpetually be tied at her chin, whenever she would face other neighbours was loosened. She did not even have the same proud look about her face. She spoke in Urdu, ‘Rakesh, I have lived a beautiful and fulfilling life. The only regret I have had has been to not have children of my own. My days are numbered and I shall soon one day go to my God. My regret would be to leave alone the three dog-children I have now.’ My father immediately understood what was implied and intervened in between, ‘Wahida-ji, I will take care of your dog-children after when you are gone. I will feed them every day and look after them.’ On hearing this, Mad Aunt took my father’s hands in hers and kissed them. She shed tears and after some time, she spoke again, ‘I am a very poor woman, Rakesh, and have nothing to give you or anybody. And today, you have given me all I could ever have asked for.’ I had not seen Mad Aunt so humble before. As a small boy, I did not immediately understand the sudden change of heart.

Mad Aunt died a week later and we buried her under Islamic laws with help from our Muslim neighbours. We brought home her dogs that by then had grown friendly with us. My father later said to us, ‘She was a great lady. People as strong and proud as her are not born every day.’

I did not understand my father’s remark until many years to come ahead.

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PS I built on the story related in this blog, adding my own fictitious events

(1) gulab jamun (hindi): a very sweet Indian delicacy favourite with Indians.
(2) aangan (hindi): quarter-of-an-acre space at the entrance of a house