Shueli's Star

Novel
Anna Sujatha Mathai 
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Previous Chapters

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Life Goes On

Things began to settle down, outwardly at least. The refugee camps in the old city, and the Purana Quila were full of Hindus and Sikhs who had fled from the massacres that had ravaged the Punjab. They came empty-handed, but didn’t stay that way too long. They were far too resourceful, with a great flair for business, They opened little shops, restaurants, innovated the auto-rickshaw (a scooter or motor-cycle attached to a rickshaw!) and soon, the erstwhile sleepy city of Delhi was bustling with a newly found vigour.
Gaya and Shueli went back to school. There were quite a few new students from Lahore and other parts of the Punjab, whose families had managed to escape in good time. There were still whispered recountings of horrific happenings. On the whole, though, the Punjabis were too robust to be broken by their traumatic experiences. Usha Prakash, a beautiful Punjabi girl, with two long plaits held together by black and scarlet ‘purandiyas’
sobbed as she told them: “My mother’s cousin and her husband were pulled out of the tonga they had got into, and were killed in the most dreadful way.. But my mother always says, ’Let the waters of our rivers flow over our dead, and heal our wounds. We must live for tomorrow.’”
Brave people, thought Shueli, whose heart still ached for Arif. She couldn’t even share that memory with any of her classmates.  And there had been no news from the escaped family. “It’s too dangerous for them to write,” said Papa, “I’m sure they will let us know how they are, once the worst is over, and things have settled back to normal.” Rasheed, their dear young servant, had also been taken to the Refugee Camp “He managed to get away with a whole group that was escorted by one of the Regiments. I think he’ll be better off, once he settles down there and gets a job.” But Ammy and Shueli were unconvinced. “He was more or less part of our family. Papa, how can you say he’ll be happy there? He’s been forced to leave his home, and all of us, and the College – where he’s lived since he was a baby.  Can anyone get over such a thing?” “Well, it’s better than being dead,” said Gaya pragmatically, which set them laughing.
Shalini was back for a term, and in whispers, Shueli told her the secret, hidden story of Arif and his family, and how they had escaped. Shueli didn’t like keeping things hidden from those dear to her, but she could not bring herself to talk of the closeness that had so magically emerged between her and Arif, in that time of shared danger and fear. So she kept it to herself. Maybe Shalini guessed that there was a little more to the story than Shueli had revealed. After she left, Shueli got a letter from Cairo in Shalini’s  flamboyant hand, with little sketches to accompany it.
“Just been reading Carmen Navaro’s latest Romance. Her heroine, Ingrid, was madly in love with Mark Croydon, who didn’t seem to notice her at all. So, do you know what Ingrid did? She bought a horse, and went riding past Mark’s house, and just in front of Mark’s house, fell off, and lay there, screaming, till Mark heard. He came running out, picked her up and carried her inside, where he laid her on the sofa. And, do you know Shueli, he noticed her for the first time, and fell madly in love with her. That’s what you’ve got to do if you want someone to sit up and look at you!” This advice was accompanied by a drawing of a curly-haired woman falling off a horse! Shueli giggled at the thought of her falling off a horse and being gathered into Arif’s arms, while he gazed at her adoringly. No. It wouldn’t work for her. He’d detest the obviousness of it. And anyway, how was she going to get all the way to Karachi on a horse? Pakistan, that strange sounding word! Why, it was as far away for her as that distant star. But it was that same bright and steadfast star which had shone for her from childhood, and was in no way diminished by partings, partitions, or the pain and fear of the human beings it shone upon.
A few months later they received a note, smuggled in by one of the Airline ladies, from Mrs. Azeez, her sister Mrs. Baig, and Arif. The note simply read: “Our eternal thanks to Mr. Philipose, Amaal, and the dear girls. Inshaah Allah, we shall meet again soon, and you shall be our guests here in Karachi. We are only gradually recovering from our terrible last days in Delhi. In fact, Shareefa is still suffering from a terrible trembling of the legs. We hope she will soon recover.” It was signed Shareefa and Sakina. On a separate piece of paper, Arif wrote: (the letter was not addressed to Shueli separately, because he knew it might make her parents uneasy.) “My heart is still in India, though I have got admission into one of the very good schools here. I miss our tents, and I miss all of you. How can I ever forget, or thank you enough? Do you remember, Shueli, ‘Oh Death in Life! The days that are no more!’?  Abba and Uncle also thank you profoundly for taking care of us in a time of danger. Have you finished your exam? I completed mine, and will be going into Senior School from next year. I found these lines from a Sufi poet, and thought you might like it, Shueli. Caravans and journeys go together, and we have just made this dangerous journey. That’s why it appealed to me, and I share it with you:
“It is a happy caravan, the caravan in which you are.
During the night, amidst the black waves of darkness,
Your presence is its guiding star.
Men of that caravan can go where they wish,
They have no fear, having you with them, like the heroes of Badr.”
Goodbye for now.  Arif.
All day Shueli went around in a happy daze, hugging the written and unwritten message that seemed to speak to  her from that letter. As it was just a note added on to the main letter, Shueli’s parents didn’t read too much into it. Ammy said “You children shared a lot during that terrible time, went through so much together. None of us can ever forget…” Only Gaya said, “Shueli, will you please let me read, and not go on and on about Arif?”
What was to come was most unexpected, as no one anticipated that anything worse could possibly happen. After their evening walk, Gaya gave Amber, their dog, a bowl of water. Ammy said “I’ll see if Shankar has started making the phulkas for dinner”, and Papa said “I have a lecture to prepare for tomorrow, but let’s hear the Evening News first” and turned the Radio on. They could not believe what they heard, the terrible words coming from the news  reader’s lips. Tears flowed from their eyes as they heard, with shock, that Mahatma Gandhi had been assassinated that day, at a prayer meeting. A bullet fired at close range had killed him. He had fallen saying “He Ram.”
“Oh Godohgod” said Ammy, also in tears “Who on earth – which villain – could have done this?” Papa just sat down, his head in his hands, and said “It’s too much. This madness – after all we’ve been through..”
And Nehru spoke for everyone, when he said  “A light has gone out of our lives.”
The music on the radio was a continuous wailing – sitars, sarods, voices, weeping for that great soul. Once again they heard “Ishwara Allah there naam/ Sabko sammathi de Bhagwan”, and also some of Gandhiji’s favourite hymns. When I survey the wondrous cross – Love so amazing, so divine, or Lead kindly light,- the night is dark, and I am far from home. The music went on for days, - every time they turned on the Radio, it was the same. The  man was gone, the music remained.
  In her confused after-memory, something that was, perhaps, not directly related, remained connected. In the Cathedral of the Redemption, one Sunday, Lord Louis Mountbatten, the first Governor-General of a free India, read the Lesson. Dressed in full Naval uniform, tall and aristocratic, Shueli thought she had never seen anyone so handsome.  Behind the secret stairway that Shalini and Shueli had so often climbed when ‘bunking’ class, the organ burst into majestic tones, and  Lord Mountbatten began to read: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.” The rich voice continued, stirring something already nascent in young Shueli’s heart. Like tender shoots, forced by a rude winter, into bud, Shueli was moving out of her childhood. “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a (wo)man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face…” This is what it means to be a woman and a human being, thought Shueli, to have a heart full of love, and to live fully, even if it isn’t easy.
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“What shall I do when I grow up, Gaya? Shall I be an actress, and get a scholarship to RADA, like Kusum Chowdhury did? I’d love that! Or perhaps I should go to Oxford, and become a professor, like Papa?” Gaya was rather non-committal in her answers. She had become a rather sickly child, and Ammy kept worrying about her, saying “I don’t know how she’s even going to complete her Senior Cambridge. We’ll have to find a boy for her very soon, and get her married.” Marriage seemed to be the solution for everything, for both Ammy and Graany. “Why can’t they leave us in peace?” grumbled Shueli, when a letter arrived from Graany, full of lists of “good boys” whose parents might agree to the connection. Of course, Graany hoped, Amaal and Piloo were putting aside something for the girls’ dowry and jewellery, without which “they will have to stay unmarried, and become teachers or something…” (this last thought was meant to imply the utter degradation of going through life without a husband.) “And don’t forget that Gaya is dark, and it will be more difficult. Kunjmol’s grandson is a handsome boy. He has an excellent job in the Munnar plantations. Then there’s Dilip, the Cherian boy, who’s very clever, and trying for the I.A.S. Should suit Shueli. That’s if you make the proposals soon. Otherwise, they’ll be snatched away. Somebody else will get hold of them. As it is, I hear Ammini is trying her level best to get Dilip! Unless you start now, the girls may stay spinsters all their lives. Good boys are few and far between, and everyone grabs them!”
 “Oh, for heaven’s sake, why does Graany go on like this?” Shueli would fume. “As if we can’t find our own boys. And as for Ammy, -“ Shueli giggled “She’s becoming as bad as Mrs. Bennett in Pride and Prejudice..”
“Yes” laughed Gaya, “She’s always trying to get you seen by the mothers of these eligible bachelors. Just to make sure that at least one of them takes to you, and wants you for her son!”
“Well, I don’t care if any old Syrian Christian mother likes me or not. They’re all so awfully boring. Don’t care for poetry, or theatre, or anything.” Shueli was always secretly dreaming of Arif anyway, which made all these suggestions and schemings of her mother and grandmother completely unreal. In a book she had just picked up, called The Sea Hawk, which she read and reread secretly, the hero, who had turned into a cruel pirate, had returned for the woman he loved, who was about to be forced into a marriage, and carried her away into the night, throwing her over his shoulder “like a sack!” “How romantic” sighed Shueli, lost in her reverie, broken by Ammy saying, “You should try to learn a little cooking, Shueli, not just sit and read all the time. If we meet Mrs. Kuruvilla next week at the dinner party at the Alexanders’ place, if she asks you whether you’re interested in cooking, what on earth will you say? “I’ll tell her I hate cooking, and want to be an actress. That should put her off for life!”
“You girls” said Ammy despairingly, “I don’t know what’s going to happen to you. At this rate, no one in our community will marry either of you. And if someone does, and he turns round to you after you’ve burned all the food, and says ‘My mother’s cooking was so wonderful. I really miss it,’ – what on earth will you do?”
Gaya, always superb with sharp repartee, retorted “I’ll tell him I miss my mother’s cooking!” And both the girls burst into uncontrolled laughter, soon joined by Ammy, who had a sharp sense of humour herself. “Of course, you do have to finish college, and be educated. But really, the best thing for a woman is to have a happy marriage, a husband and children,” said Ammy, who had, herself, never wanted more.
“Perhaps because you booked your husband when you were only two!” said Shueli, which set them laughing again, and put an end to the subject of marriage versus career, - for the time being at least. They all went into the courtyard where ice-cream was being made in the old wooden bucket cum churner. “Pack it properly with salt outside, khansaamaa “ Ammy advised the cook.
Her ice-cream was always the creamiest, her dosais and idlis and appams were luscious, and her cakes and pies were the best. “Must have inherited it from Graany” Shueli and Gaya would say. Papa would tease them “ Well, you know that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach!” which would get both the girls wild: “How hateful, Papa. As if that’s all there is to a man!”
“Shueli’s thinking of the man’s Soul,” said Gaya, looking upwards soulfully. Shueli laughed with everyone else, but thought to herself “Who cares about food? I’ll find my perfect soul-mate one day.” In a way, she thought, she had found him in Arif, but he had had to go away just when she discovered him. Also, maybe she was just a bit young to really know, though of course she felt she did. It was all very confusing. They had gone to see a cinema the other day. The heroine seemed to be quite old – over thirty at least. She’d gone to Italy, and, for the first time in her life, fallen “head over heels in love.” But the Italian let her down, and she took a train to leave for ever. HE rushed to the station, realizing the terrible misunderstanding that was parting them. He held a red rose in his hand for her. But he arrived too late. The train was just steaming out. His hands just barely touched hers. Her fingers just grazed the rose, which he held out for her. She could not grasp it. “ How sad” thought Shueli “I wonder if life is always like that?”
Time enough to find out, to test the waters of life. In these in between years, she could dream and hope, before the black waters of real life engulfed her.
 
 
 
CHAPTER TWELVE
Mussoorie 
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That summer, before Shueli was to join college, the family had gone to Mussoorie,  the hill station built by the British, a retreat in the Himalayas, from the summer’s unbearable heat and dust. They would pack food and water, and set off in the car, with Papa driving.  Past  Dehra Dun, at the foothills of the Himalayas, the road would start climbing, winding sharply all the way. “Hairpin bends” the girls would shout excitedly, hanging their heads out of the window, enjoying the cool breeze, and the fragrance of pine, which got stronger as they ascended into the hills. Gaya sometimes got nauseous, and had to be given limes to smell or suck.
Their dog, Leo, suddenly revived after the fierce heat of the plains, had his head out of the window, his tongue lolling wetly, panting with delight. Ammy would never agree to leave the dog with Jumman  (the man of all work), because he “won’t really care for our poor doggy, and he may just die of a broken heart!” Ammy loved all animals passionately, and the dogs were a part of the family…as Gaya had said once, “They are human beings too, aren’t they?” 
Once they reached Mussoorie, they would head for Firland Hall, either walking, or on ponies, or Ammy would get a dandy, a kind of rickshaw carried by three or four men. Firland Hall  was surrounded by orchards, overlooking a dream-like valley. They loved to sit in one of the upper balconies, or the bay windows of the old English style drawing room, and watch the mist swirl in over the valley. Firland Hall was a centre for the Language School,  which all British Missionaries in India had to attend.  It was managed by Aunty Sarala Rockford, who was a good friend of Ammy’s.  Ammy, who could never resist a good story, though Papa was saying “Why do you want to talk about such things in front of the children? Why not drop it?” would tell them about Aunty Sarala, who had been found in a rubbish heap in an old part of a South Indian city. Nobody wanted the ugly, naked creature – left without even a stitch to cover her, a girl child at that. “There was one family that had been praying for a child. But even they said that, after all they didn’t know what sort of blood she carried, what kind of stock she came from, and finally, they gave up the idea. There was an old English missionary lady called Miss Dorothy Seaward. She had already adopted three Indian waifs, and was willing to take this small morsel of unwanted humanity. So Aunty Sarala became Sarala Seaford, and was saved from certain death in the streets. I don’t think the old lady was particularly  loving.  She just did what she thought was right. Sarala got food, clothes, education, but not much more. That’s why she seems so tough and hard of heart. She never received any love. Anyway, Sarala was introduced to an English gentleman who had some business in India, and when he said he wanted to marry her, the old foster mother agreed. Sarala was happy to make some kind of life for herself, a home of her own.. Her husband became very successful in his business, and they had a boy and a girl, - Tony and Mary, who go to school in England, and come here for the holidays, as you know.” Apart from the missionary families, there were many Indian families who came there regularly for their summer holidays. There was also a newly married couple from the South, the Devadasses, she, very plump and fair-skinned, he a huge, dark man, like many Tamilians.  Shueli was fascinated by them. They took her on shopping expeditions, and to the Mall for lunch. “But it’s very strange, Gaya,” said Shueli, “Every time I go and knock on their door, they take ages. They never seem to be dressed. And then she keeps giggling – quite silly really.” This summer, they were a bit too old, with Shueli going to be sixteen, but earlier, they had had a lovely group of children, who played games, went for long walks to Kemptee Falls and other places, organised picnics under the pine trees, and raided the apple and pear orchards whenever they could, much to the chagrine of the old Mali, who chased them off, shouting “Baba log, chor, chor. I’ll report to the Burra Sahib.” But he could never catch them, and they would scramble for safety, to the branch of a tree, or to one of the balconies, which was out of bounds for him! Then there was Jonathan (Jonty Boy) Jarvis, whose mother was a striking blonde, her golden hair coiled in a regal plait round her head. Jonty Boy always made a beeline for Shueli’s room, and she would think up stories to please a three-year old. Sometimews, when she was changing, she would see him standing there smiling, his thumb in his mouth. “Happy, Jonty Boy?”  she’d ask, and he’d reply with a blissful smile “Ummm… ‘appy”  Then there was the utterly handsome young Pesi Shroff, about two years older than Shueli. He never seemed to do anything quiet, like just sitting and reading. He asked Shueli if she’d like to go to the skating Rink with him, but she had to admit she didn’t know how to skate, upon which he would reply, with the cruel candour of the young, “You really are boring. Can’t you do anything?” which made Shueli’s heart plummet to the depths of despair. She cheered up, however, when he suggested a long ramble to Landour instead, and they could listen to the haunting cry of the cuckoo, and feel the pine fragrance of the mountain air on their faces.
  There were two very old ladies staying there that summer. One was Lady Emily Kinnaird, who was practically one hundred years old. “Do you know it was Lady Emily who started the Kinnaird College in Lahore, or, it was named after her. She was a founder of the Y.W.C.A. in India.” But the aristocratic old lady had lost most of her memory, and liked to play some quite simple games. She got the children sitting around her, and told them stories, which were often interrupted by “Oh dear me, I’ve quite forgotten what I was telling you!”
The other old lady was an Indian, whose father had been a great scholar, who had translated the Ramayana into English metrical verse form. He had gone secretly, so Ammy told them, to England in the last century. “It was considered unclean and a loss of caste for a Hindu to go abroad at that time. You can imagine that long journey by ship for weeks, almost a month, and how strange it must have been to eat food cooked in animal fat, eat pork or even beef, and watch people with their strange ways of dancing, a man holding a woman and going round and round! Well, this scholar made that fearful voyage, and did the Indian Civil Service exam held there. As a student in Calcutta he’d already discovered the English classics, and later, at University College, he discovered the great poets. Everyone was very shocked when he did a Bengali translation of  the Rig Veda.”  Once they heard the very old lady, Romesh Chander Dutt’s  daughter, remark, “Well, you know he always said that the Mahabharata was the Iliad of India, while the Ramayana was the Indian Odyssey!”  They’d always loved the story of Sita and Rama, especially the exciting way Ammy told it, and looked at the old lady with great reverence, even when she was being crotchety and complaining: “The daal is so watery.” Or “Why does the soup smell like this?”
For Shueli’s sixteenth birthday, Appa and Ammy arranged a tea-party, under the old trees at the bottom of the garden, where the pine cones lay in great heaps. They went shopping on the Mall, and Shueli was asked to choose her first really nice sari. It was a pale blue Mysore chiffon, with a narrow gold border, and Shueli hoped, rather nervously, that she would look beautiful and grown-up in it. People still referred to them as “the children” but Shueli could feel her body bursting out, budding, blossoming – it was a lovely feeling. People were always complaining about how awful it is to be a woman. She thought it was the most glorious thing. Her feelings, though confused, were heightened when, on her birthday morning, there was a knock on their cottage door. It was handsome Pesi Shroff, looking more than ever like a film star, his hair brilliantined, his acquiline features drawn into a wide grin. He was carrying the biggest bunch of red roses Shueli had ever seen. No one had ever given her roses before. Arif had once plucked a rose from the garden, a single red rose, and given it to her. She had treasured it ever since, and had pressed the rose petals into a copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. It opened at the page where Juliet cries to the night: “Give me my Romeo, and when he shall die,/ Take him and cut him out in little stars,/ And he will make the face of heaven so fine / That all the world will be in love with night/ And pay no worship to the garish sun.” It was Arif she thought of, as she stood, tongue-tied, looking at Pesi smiling awkwardly, holding out the roses to her. “Here. These are for you. Happy Birthday and all the rest of it. See you in the evening,” and vanished! There was a little note attached to the roses, which said very simply “Happy Birthday, and Many Happy Returns of the Day, dear Shueli.”  It was her first ever gift of roses, if she didn’t count the pressed rose petals from Arif.
The party in the evening was perfect. She blew out the sixteen candles on the chocolate cake baked by Aunty Sarala. “My little gift for you, Shueli, and God bless you.” Papa, Ammy and Gaya gave her a collection of classics: Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, The Mill on the Floss, and a lovely copy of The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. “How do I love Thee? Let me count the ways…”  “Oh! I love it, and I’ll treasure it all my life.” Ammy had written a little card on which she’d quoted a Victorian verse: “Be good, sweet maid. Let those who will be clever.”
“Ammy what on earth do you mean by writing such insipid stuff? I’d much rather be clever than good!” Gaya agreed most fervently, and they all laughed as Ammy looked at her subversive daughters with pride and amusement.
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Anna Sujatha Mathai grew up in St. Stephen's College Delhi, where her father was Head of the English Department. It was an idyllic childhood, reading wonderful books, hearing poetry, seeing plays. She and her sister spent many sunny days exploring The Ridge, unimaginable now! Sujatha started writing Short Stories and Essays for The TREASURE CHEST, an All-India Children's Magazine edited by an American Editor, and translated into many Indian languages. At 14 she was chosen by Treasure Chest to be their youngest Special Correspondent! 
 What she loved most was the Theatre. She was selected, at age 14,  by the Shakespeare Society of St. Stephen's College, to be Viola in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Later, doing her B.A.{Honours} in English Literature at Miranda College, she won the College Drama Prize, and later, the Best Actress Award of the University of Delhi.
  Getting married at age 20, to a young surgeon, changed her life completely. In Edinburgh, she joined the University for a Post Graduate Course in Social Studies. She worked in that field for several years, in York, Sheffield, London. Leaving it all behind, coming back to small-town India, was traumatic for her. She used to write on scraps of paper, and throw them away. Her sister, in Bangalore, sent her a cutting in which American professor, Howard McCord of the Univ. of Seattle asked for poems by "avant-garde young Indian poets" for his Anthology. Her sister wrote "At the most, you'll lose a few stamps!" Prof McCord's warm response to her poems, made her start taking her writing more seriously! Her first poems were published in P. Lal's MODERN INDIAN POETRY IN ENGLISH. She continued to write, and, later, moving to Bangalore her dream of theatre was somewhat realised. She had roles in plays by Shaeffer, Ibsen, Sartre, Pinter, Tennessee Williams, Lorca and others. She was a co-founder,with friend Snehalata Reddy, of THE ABHINAYA POETRY/THEATRE GROUP.
Her poems have been published in The Commonwealth Journal; Indian Literature; The Little Magazine; The Times of India; Dialogue India; Chelsea (New York); The London Magazine; The Poetry Review (London), Two Plus Two (Switzerland.), Contemporary Asian Poetry Ed. Agnes Lam, Hong Kong/Singapore: Post-Independence Poetry in English ed. by Arundhathi Subramaniam She was among 4 poets "show-cased" on the 50th Anniversary of the Sahitya Akademi. She was an Associate Editor of the prestigious Literary Journal, Two Plus Two,based in Lausanne, Switzerland. She has 5 collections of Poetry in English, and her poems have been translated into several Indian and European languages.
She now lives in Delhi. ​​​

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