Jamila Gavin - The Wheel of Surya

‘It’s mine!’ raged Ajit. ‘I found it.’

‘It’s mine!’ insisted Marvinder. ‘Ma gave it me.’

When Ajit saw his mother, he fought harder, shouting, ‘Ma! Marvinder’s trying to take my tin away.’

‘No, I’m not!’ screamed Marvinder. ‘You took it from me. It’s mine, I tell you,’ and she tugged even more fiercely.

However, determined that no snip of a girl would get the better of her son, Kalwant yelled for Jhoti.

As Jhoti hurried into view, Kalwant pointed accusingly, and shrieked, ‘Do you see?’ as Marvinder now had Ajit flat on his back and was sitting astride his chest. ‘That child of yours is a little snake! Look how she attacks my son! Stop her at once, or I’ll . . .’

Jhoti turned hesitatingly towards the battling children. Marvinder was winning. She held the tin grimly between her fingers while Ajit kicked and punched in his efforts to regain it.

Jhoti knew it was Marvinder’s tin. It was a Bournville chocolate tin which she had retrieved from the Chadwicks’ rubbish tip. When Marvinder saw her mother, she cried indignantly, ‘Ma, Ma! Ajit says this tin is his. But it’s mine, isn’t it? You gave it me! He’s trying to steal it!’

‘Did you hear that?’ Kalwant’s voice peaked with self-justified outrage. ‘Did you hear?’ she appealed to the world at large. ‘Marvinder is calling my son a thief ! This is too much!’ She plonked down her water vessels and with threatening hand outstretched, she strode towards the children.

Jhoti broke into a clumsy sprint, but could not reach her daughter before Kalwant snatched her up, tipped her upside down and began slapping her bare bottom for all she was worth. Marvinder’s screams echoed round the compound. The old men paused in their gossiping, turned round and frowned. The other children froze their actions and stared in awe.

‘Stop it, stop it!’ begged Jhoti, crying herself. ‘She’s only a baby. Leave her alone!’ She grabbed her daughter’s head and managed to clasp her under the shoulders. For a moment, it looked as Marvinder would be torn limb from limb as the two warring mothers tugged at each end of her.

Then another voice rang out from within the low, flat-roofed dwelling. It was a voice cracked with age, but authoritative. ‘For goodness sake!’ Madanjit Kaur berated them. ‘Can’t an old woman get any peace around here?’

Mother-in-law shuffled out. Her unmade grey hair hung loosely down her back. She stood surveying the scene with hands on hips, her narrow, black eyes glaring vehemently. The baggy folds of her pyjamas beneath the full, green cotton tunic, could not disguise her powerful, stocky figure, or the strength of will with which she presided over her domain.

‘Yes, Jhoti! I know it’s you.’ She wagged an accusing finger. ‘No good dropping your head in that shamefaced way. There’s been nothing but trouble from you ever since you entered this household, and it’s not as though you came with much dowry either. How could we tell, when we arranged this marriage, that you had been so badly brought up? And now we see you doing the same with your own child, wilful and disobedient girl! Arreh Baba ! I guessed as much as soon as I laid eyes on you, but no one would listen to me. The old man is too fond of a pretty face, that’s the trouble! You all are!’ She aimed her recriminations at the old men, but they just shrugged and turned away bending closer over their cards, not wishing to be drawn into any womanish disputes.

‘Get on back to your tasks, Jhoti, and take your brat with you!’ she commanded.

Kalwant smirked, and dropped Marvinder’s legs which she had been clutching all this time. Jhoti staggered as the full weight of her daughter swung against her body.

Marvinder’s sobs pierced the air. ‘Ma, Ma! It’s my tin. You know it is!’

Kalwant, under the full protection of Mother-in-law’s gaze, reached out and extricated the tin from Marvinder’s grip. ‘There you are, my precious,’ she held it out to her son. ‘Now it’s yours again!’

Ajit snatched it gleefully and ran round proudly displaying it like a trophy. Marvinder’s mouth opened wider as a protesting wail gathered in her throat, but Jhoti hastily stuffed the end of her veil into the child’s mouth, and heaving her up on to her hip, ran from the scene.

‘Hush, darling!’ she entreated. ‘Or Grandmother will have us both beaten. I’ll find you another tin, I promise.’

Only when she reached the privacy of the inner courtyard, did she set her child down on the ground. Then she unstuffed the veil from her daughter’s mouth and wiped away the tears from both their faces.

‘Come and help me finish grinding the spices. You like that, don’t you?’ she whispered, hugging and kissing her.

Marvinder nodded, weeping quietly now as her mother held her tightly. ‘Oh, darling baby,’ Jhoti whispered, ‘who else would I have to love, if I didn’t have you?’

Living as she did with her husband Govind’s family, Jhoti was at the very bottom of the pecking order. Not only was Govind the youngest of three sons, but he was always away. She had met him for the first time when he had come home for their marriage, and then a week later, he had gone again; back to Amritsar. In due course they sent him word to say that she was pregnant, and he said he would come home in time for the birth. But Jhoti gave birth earlier than expected, and when he heard it was a girl, he didn’t hurry back. It was another two months before he saw his daughter. But at least Jhoti had been in her own home then. She stayed as long as she dared, relishing in the affection which her mother and sisters lavished on her. How they cared for her and her baby; each day her mother would come with oils and massage her belly, her limbs and her feet; her sisters washed and combed out her hair, rubbed and oiled her scalp and then talked and joked and laughed for hours with her, taking it in turns to rock the infant.

When she finally returned to her in-laws, she wondered if the pain of homesickness would ever pass; and in the evening, when all the chores were done, when the men got tipsy on home-brewed rice wine, and the women welded themselves into tight little gossipy knots from which Jhoti was usually excluded, Jhoti would soothe her baby to sleep, then slip away and walk through the dark fields, and climb the steep dyke to the narrow, straight-as-a-die, long white road; turning her face towards home, she looked and looked until the gleaming road disappeared over the dark horizon.

Jhoti’s life began on that long, white road. Only six miles further down to the south, she had been born in another small farming village. A village so simple, that a casual eye would barely have distinguished it from the well-ploughed earth and the dappled shade of eucalyptus trees.

She was taken to her new home along this same road, aged thirteen, a child bride. Every time she came and stood on the edge of the road, she remembered that day; remembered the train of bullock carts, all festooned with garlands of flowers and overburdened with too many wedding guests. How flamboyant the men had looked; her father, her uncles, her cousins and brothers, like peacocks with their turbans of turquoise and blue and green and vivid pink. Then there were the women, glittering like tinsel. How they loved weddings. What an opportunity to get out their finery; their thick, chunky jewellery, their satin kurta pyjamas, their tinselly veils glittering with silver and golden threads, so dazzling the eye that they looked as if they might burst into flames in the heat of the sun.

They had chosen the pure white bullocks to pull the carts. Usually, the bullocks would have been pulling a plough, or winding a dreary path round and round and round a well, all day, drawing water to irrigate the fields. But that day was her wedding day, and their thick white skins had been lavishly painted with rich colours, to defy the brown summer arid landscape, and their horns, like arched spears, were wrapped in gold.