Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

'She's got two more hairs on her chin,' Aisha said. She leant in, closer. And then, in her hip-hop voice, whispered, 'Hey, Dadds, how you doin'?'

She jumped back.

'What?' Sharmeen said.

'She spoke.'

'So what? She does sometimes. She thinks she's in Rawalpindi. Talking to the butcher.'

'No, idiot. She spoke in English. She said, "I am very well, thank you."'

'She must have heard it somewhere. Come here .'

But Aisha pulled the couch closer to the bed, and turned her face sideways to look into the opening in the quilt. Sharmeen had seen her get this way before – when Aisha got obsessed with something, she focused so hard that she really couldn't hear somebody trying to talk to her from two feet away. It was very annoying, and if she got fixated on Daddi they would have to come up here every day for the next week. Sharmeen got up, went around the bottom of the bed and put a hand on Aisha's back. 'A-isha,' she said.

'Quiet, na. She's talking.'

'She jabbers all the time.' Daddi muttered away morning, noon and night, she spoke to the walls of her room and told stories and occasionally cursed, which made Ammi laugh and Abba frown. All this frightened Sharmeen, these purblind eyes, this stringy white hair and the flaky flesh underneath. She could hear a voice under the quilt, reedy and brittle. She wished she was somewhere else, outside in the crisp American frost.

'It's English,' Aisha said.

'Don't be silly. Daddi doesn't know English. And Dadda couldn't even read anything. They didn't speak English, that's certain.' Daddi's husband had been illiterate, and Daddi could read Urdu, everyone in the family knew this. But Daddi had sacrificed and scrimped to educate Abba, she had said her youngest son was going to be a professional man, not a tempo-driver like his father. And Dadda's first wife and her children had laughed at her, and thrown her out of the house right after Dadda's early death. Daddi had been out on the street, with three children and no money, nothing, and she had still managed. She had managed to make Abba something other than a tempo-driver. All this was the family history, which Sharmeen had known ever since she could remember, but through her own life nobody had ever mentioned Daddi speaking English. That was just absurd.

'Come here,' Aisha said, and reached behind and pulled Sharmeen down. 'Listen!'

Sharmeen found herself face to face with Daddi. The pale skin was blotchy now, disfigured by spots, but Sharmeen knew that once it had been legendarily glorious and resplendent. Dadda had married Daddi because he had been dazzled by her Punjabi beauty, and his first wife had despised her, had called Daddi a prostitute, had hated having her in the same house, had fought against it. Dadda used to call Daddi a rose, a zannat ki hoor. Looking at Daddi, this was hard to believe, but this is what everyone said. Daddi's breath was now rank, like old adhesive. Sharmeen was sure that she would never ever let herself become so repulsive. She would rather die first. Sharmeen made a face. 'That's not English.'

'Now it's not. Now she's saying something in Punjabi. What is it?'

What Daddi was saying had the cadence of a chant, a prayer, but it was unfamiliar. 'I don't know,' Sharmeen said. 'Let's go .'

'I've heard it somewhere. It's a song.'

'Yes, yes, now she's singing some Daler Mehendi song for you.'

Aisha wasn't about to rise to Sharmeen's weak sarcasm, not while she had this new mystery to investigate. She had her head cocked close to Daddi's. 'She stopped.'

'Good. So come over here. Then after five minutes we can leave.'

But Aisha insisted on sitting next to Daddi and waiting for her to speak again. There was no budging her. She watched Daddi intently. Sharmeen turned away from that wet, wrinkly mouth, and tried to talk to Aisha, to get back to some other subject, anything. She tried Chandrachur Singh, Brad Pitt, school, strict teachers. Aisha remained distracted, and answered only in haans and naas. Sharmeen, as hard as she tried, couldn't quite push away the chip-chip sound that Daddi made with her lips every few seconds. Finally she fell silent, and they both waited for Daddi to say something.

Sharmeen jumped when she did, even though she knew it was coming. This time Daddi's voice was louder, stronger, but it still sounded as if it was coming from somewhere else, from somewhere far away. It was the chant again, ' Nanak dukhiya sab sansaar ,' and this time it was familiar to Sharmeen too. 'What is it?' she whispered.

'I don't know,' Aisha said.

Daddi broke off. In that terse silence the Punjabi words fell together in Sharmeen's head and she knew what they were. She didn't want to react, but she stiffened against Aisha's side and Aisha instantly knew that she knew.

'What is it?' Aisha said.

Sharmeen didn't want to say. None of it made any sense. She shrugged. 'It's Punjabi.'

'I can hear that also. But your Punjabi is pretty good. What is she saying ?'

Aisha wasn't going to let it go. Sharmeen whispered, 'It's some kind of song. Like those sardars sing at their temple or whatever.'

Aisha shook her head. 'Your daddi is saying a Sikh's prayer?'

Sharmeen nodded. 'Nanak, that's from the sardars, no?'

'Yes,' Aisha said. She was holding Sharmeen's hands very tightly, and now she asked the crucial question. 'But why?'

'I don't know.' Sharmeen had no idea. Dadda was a Punjabi, and Daddi was a Punjabi refugee from the other side. Her family had all been killed by Hindus. Dadda had rescued her and brought her home. He had married her, and his first wife had raged, and after Dadda died the chudail first wife had thrown her and Abba out. Dadda had loved Daddi, and if he had lived, everything would have been different. But Daddi and Abba – who was then only a boy – had suffered, and finally Abba had triumphed. Nowhere in all this old history was there any reason for Daddi to say Sikh prayers.

'Find out.' Aisha was all aflush with the drama of the moment, with the possibilities of the mystery.

'How?'

'Ask questions.'

Ask questions. That was easy for Aisha to say. Sharmeen didn't want to ask her parents questions about Sikh prayers. Aisha wouldn't quite understand, but Sharmeen knew in her bones, in her very blood, that asking about this would be a disaster. Abba hated Sikhs only a little less than he hated Hindus. He said the sardars were a barbarous, uncultured people, full of violence and hate. Hindus were worse, of course, they were unscrupulous liars and cowards and idolaters, but Sikhs were half-way to Hindus. Abba had spent his life fighting against both, and had been decorated and promoted for his dedication and his successes. Sharmeen wasn't going to start talking to him about Sikh prayers in his own house. She loved him, but he was an austere, disciplined man with an unforgiving temper. He went to work at the embassy and spent long hours, and the home he returned to had to be clean, quiet and peaceful, and full of godly grace. Sharmeen knew better than to provoke an upset with stupid questions about the mutterings of senile old Daddi. So she finally managed to get Aisha packed off home, and retreated to her own room, and tried to calm herself down. But she was restless, and after lunch she went back to Daddi's room.

Daddi was still curled up in exactly the same position, with her head to the left. Sharmeen knew that Ammi got her up in the mornings and evenings to feed her, and give her medicines, and sometimes Daddi was even carried down by Abba to the drawing room, to sit with everyone. But mostly she spent her whole life here, in this one room, dozing and talking to herself. Sharmeen shuddered, and swore to herself again that she would never be this horribly old, and waited for Daddi to say Sikh stuff again. Daddi was mumbling and muttering now, though, and it was hard to make anything out, and although it was Punjabi, it wasn't any kind of prayer. Sharmeen sat patiently. She had a maths textbook with her, and she made herself comfortable on the low green chair and read. She was curious now herself, not as excitedly as Aisha, but with a strange, uneasy flow of anticipation and dread and nausea through her abdomen. She wanted Daddi to say that thing again, that prayer, but she didn't.