Ruth Prawer Jhabvala - Heat and Dust

Yesterday was the Husband's Wedding Day and I accompanied Inder Lal's mother and her friends to the place of pilgrimage. We went on a bus crammed with women bound for the same destination. Most of them were elderly, and obviously the object of their pilgrimage was, like ours, to have a pleasant outing. Everyone had brought a lot of food which was shared out with many jokes. Some of them had brought barren daughters-in-law, but these remained silent and in the background. Ritu, who had enough children, was left at home.

I have been wanting for some time to see Baba Firdaus' grove, but I didn't get to see much ofit yesterday. It was not at all as I had imagined the Nawab's favourite picnic spot! There was a merry little fair going on with rickety roundabouts and a wooden wheel turning round and rows of barrows selling fly-specked food. Devotional songs blared from a loudspeaker attached to a tree. I couldn't even see Baba Firdaus' shrine because there was a tight mass of people wedged in front of it all trying to get near it. We too joined them and pushed in the same direction. By the time we got there, perspiring and struggling within the crowd, it was impossible to have a thought in one's head except to join in whatever was going on. It never became clear to me what this was. There was a priest sitting there receiving offerings. Some of the women — old ones, so they couldn't be invoking the particular blessing of the place — became very devout and shouted out the name of God as if in pain and some of them tried to prostrate themselves though this was difficult on account of there being no room. I didn't know what I was supposed to do but, in any case, just to have got there seemed to be enough.

Our little party found a place under a tree where we all sat in a circle and ate and drank as we had been doing steadily since leaving home. One of the old ladies had a story to tell of a young woman who had been advised an operation on her fallopian tubes but had instead been brought here by her mother-in-law after which conception took place. (Actually, the story ended badly — the woman's husband had had a spell put on him by another woman and this made him drive his wife and her new-born child out of the house). There were more stories, and I liked listening to them, just as I liked sitting here with; my friends in the middle of this festive scene. I felt part of it all — absorbed as I had been absorbed by the worshipping crowd packed into the shrine.

My friends turned to me: "What about you? What did you pray for?" They teased me and laughed. I said they had brought me to the wrong shrine — first they should have taken me to one where not babies but a husband was to be got. More laughter — but really they were being serious (it was a very serious subject), and perhaps I too had thoughts other than usual.

1923

The Husband's Wedding Day was always a very difficult time for Major Minnies. Since Baba Firdaus' shrine lay within the Nawab's state, there was not much that Major Minnies could do except advise. This he did, more and more as the day drew near, nor was he put off by the Nawab laughing at him and saving "My dear Major, of course, of course, it will be just as you say, why do you worry." But the Major did worry and not without reason.

In those days Khatm still had a large proportion of Muslim inhabitants (this changed in '47 when they were either killed or emigrated to Pakistan). The Nawab himself was a Muslim and so were almost half his subjects. Many of them did not like it when Baba Firdaus' shrine was taken over by Hindu worshippers and always managed to create a disturbance on that day. The disturbance didn't necessarily take place at the shrine itself — two rival groups might clash in the bazaar over some petty issue like a gambling debt, and before long passions rose to that terrible pitch that only religious sentiments could inspire. It did not help that these were days when the summer heat was just getting into its stride (later, as the heat progressed and day followed endless day of it, everyone was too exhausted for strong feeling). So the situation as the day drew near was explosive and the Major said "Vigilance, vigilance," and the Nawab good-naturedly laughed at him.

Sure enough, in that first summer of Olivia's, there was rioting in Khatm on the Husband's Wedding Day. Not that Olivia was aware of very much from inside her shuttered bungalow in the Civil Lines: and yet, a certain restlessness penetrated even into her pretty yellow drawing room where she sat playing Schumann on the piano. Everything had to be kept shut tight because there was a dust storm blowing outside. Olivia could not concentrate on Schumann for long. She kept thinking of Douglas: he had tried not to show it, but she knew he had been worried for days. Satipur was the adjoining state to Khatm and communal troubles tended to spread like forest fire. The servants were restless too; they quarrelled a lot with each other, and one of them got drunk and had a fight with another over a woman.

Later in the morning Mrs. Crawford and Mrs. Minnies came to visit her. They had come to reassure her. They told her that there was nothing to worry about in Satipur where all precautions had been taken by Mr. Crawford and Douglas. Here there had been proper vigilance: and if only similar attempts could have been made in Khatm as Major Minnies had begged and pleaded with — the Nawab — "But it was the same last year," Mrs. Minnies said. "Arthur had warned him, he had told him over and over… 12 killed and 75 wounded. The whole of the cloth bazaar was gutted — I saw it a week later and it was still smouldering. Arthur says it may be worse this year."

"It's criminal," said Mrs. Crawford with deep feeling.

"When he could so easily control it — if he wanted to — " "The Nawab?" Olivia asked. "But of course he'd want to!"

"Don't forget he's a Mohammedan too," they told her. "Yes but he's not like that; not a fanatic. Good heavens."

She laughed at the idea. But their faces remained grim. She urged: "He's such a modern person. Why, he's just like — almost like one of us in that way. I mean he's not superstitious or bigoted at all. He's so entirely emancipated. "

“Do you really think so?" Mrs. Crawford said flatly.

"Oh I'm sure of it. I've heard the way he talked about the suttee, it was just like an English person talking. He was so disgusted. Barbaric, he said. "

"Naturally, he would say that. Suttee is a Hindu custom.

It's different when it's anything Mohammedan. Very different then."

Olivia did not believe them. Of course she could not contradict or even argue with them: that was always the trouble, she never could, she didn't have the right to say anything because they knew everything about India and she nothing. Yet she felt it was she who knew the Nawab, not they. To them he was just a person they had to deal with officially, an Indian ruler, but to her he was — yes, a friend. He really was.

She thought she was glad when they left, but in fact she was more uneasy than ever. It was their fault, coming with such tales to frighten her; and talking like that about the Nawab. She paced her drawing room, nervously adjusted her flowers (at this season there was only the heavy almondscented oleander and jasmine like a drug). Schumann was impossible, she shut the piano. She began to write to Marcia, but Marcia was in Paris and it was impossible to explain anything from here to there.

She heard the sound of a car outside. The Nawab! Her heart beat — she didn't know with what strong emotion. She opened the door leading to the verandah and found the servants.clustered there with their heads close together. When they saw her, they got quickly to their feet. "The dust got instantly into her eyes, nostrils, between her teeth; it blew in gusts into the room. "It's me!" cried a voice from the car. It was not the Nawab but Harry.