A Delhi Obsession
ALSO BY M.G. VASSANJI
FICTION
Nostalgia
The Magic of Saida
The Assassin’s Song
When She Was Queen
The In-Between World of Vikram Lall
Amriika
The Book of Secrets
Uhuru Street
No New Land
The Gunny Sack
NON-FICTION
And Home Was Kariakoo
A Place Within: Rediscovering India
Mordecai Richler
Copyright © 2019 M.G. Vassanji
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher—or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.
Doubleday Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House Canada Limited
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Title: A Delhi obsession / M.G. Vassanji.
Names: Vassanji, M. G., author.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190053089 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190053127 |
ISBN 9780385692854 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780385692861 (EPUB)
Classification: LCC PS8593.A87 D44 2019 | DDC C813/.54—dc23
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover and book design: Lisa Jager
Cover images: (building) Sunny Hopper / EyeEm / Getty Images; (texture) donatas1205; (stars) C2Lens, both Shutterstock
Published in Canada by Doubleday Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited
www.penguinrandomhouse.ca
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CONTENTS
Cover
Also by M.G. Vassanji
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Munir Aslam Khan
Mohini Singh
Munir Khan
Mohini
Munir
Mohini
Munir
Mohini
Munir
Mohini
Munir
Mohini
Munir
Mohini
Munir
Mohini
Munir
Mohini
Munir
Mohini
Munir
Mohini
Munir
Mohini
Munir
Mohini
Munir
Mohini
Munir
Munir Khan, Mohini Singh
Author’s Note
in memoriam
Neerja Chand
The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, and literature[s]. They neither intermarry nor interdine together, and indeed they belong to two different civilisations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions.
—MUHAMMAD ALI JINNAH TO THE MUSLIM LEAGUE, LAHORE (1940)
not Hindu, not Muslim
a child is born but human
—SAHIR LUDHIANVI, LYRICS FROM THE FILM DHOOL KA PHOOL (1959)
Having said this, the illustrious daughter of the king of Madra, wife by law to that bull among men [Pandu], climbed onto the fire of that funeral pyre.
—MAHABHARATA, SAMBHAVA PARVA (TRANSLATED BY BIBEK DEBROY)
I will slap anyone who looks at Hindu women the wrong way!
—INDIAN MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT, 2017
Munir Aslam Khan
IT CAME AS A WHIM, a thought that flew in from nowhere and spread wings in his mind, that he should visit India. More precisely, Delhi, the city from which his grandfather had departed a hundred years ago, when it was the new showpiece of the British Raj. He had heard about that city as a child in his home in Kenya, shown no interest; and about the reason for that departure, he had caught the barest innuendo of an intrigue that had no conceivable relevance.
Munir Aslam Khan was recently widowed, his wife of many years having died suddenly in a car accident, skidding on an ice patch a block away from their home in North Toronto. It had been Halloween night and bitterly cold, the first snow had come early and unannounced, and having given its warning it had disappeared. A year later now he had not recovered; he did not expect to. His sense of loss—grief was too strong a word—he knew he would always carry as a memorial to their years spent together. The awkward sympathies from the neighbours had ceased; there remained only the friendly banter and the occasional joke from Andy or Jim or Joanna, called out from their porches as he passed on the sidewalk. He found some solace in his reading, which now consisted of histories mainly. His own writing had run into dry ground. He had no ambition left in that direction, he had written whatever he had inside him, a few books of fiction, with modest success; anything more now was mere addendum or exercise, scratching at futility. And so he was often at loose ends. There were no longer any pressing chores, which he had disliked when she was around but had helped to fill the days of their later years, as they’d liked to call them. They had discussed the eventuality of death; he was assured that she, always the better earner, would remain in comfort for the long remainder of her life that she could anticipate. But death ignores statistics—knows not night or day, as his elders would piously proclaim in their fatalistic moments—and here he was, alone. There was the numbing comfort of Scotch or a red at night.
It was the end of November and he was returning from a long walk in the neighbourhood; approaching home he watched a moving truck arrive a few houses down and proceed to unload. A wiry young man, barely in his thirties, already bald and very obviously of Indian origin, stood behind the truck, watching stuff come down from the back; on the porch his wife, smart in tight denims, holding a girl of about three by the hand, also stood watching. Techies, Munir mused, with ready-made money. We came with pennies in our pockets, he recalled of his generation of new Canadians. Munir stared at the scene: a sofa came wobbling down, as if riding a wave from the van, and he felt an irrepressible surge of compassion. To be that young…And with no apparent logic the further thought occurred: I should go to India.
It had been always at the back of the mind, a journey that he should make one day, eventually. Those were her words: one day, eventually. Aileen, a Scot by descent, had no association with India; she had agreed in principle that they should go, it was necessary for him, but the thought of catching a bug, something noxious and Indian, had always held her back. For Munir, the prospect was daunting precisely because of its significance: a return to the ancestral homeland after something like a century. Munir could now vaguely recall as a child imagining India alternately as Delhi, a strange city somewhere that might appear in the Arabian Nights, which Sinbad might have visited. But while a lot of other travel was undertaken by Munir and Aileen during their marriage, India remained “undone,” a hole in their world map of journeys. Now, watching the young family moving into his neighbourhood, the woman directing the movers through the narrow door, the child tugging
at the mother, the father holding the storm door open, the revelation came without equivocation, he should visit India, especially Delhi, and fill that hole.
He realized that with a surname like Khan there might be a hitch obtaining a visa. Such were the times, it could not be helped. The world travelled nervously these days. And indeed, when he submitted his visa application at the Indian Consulate, the clerk raised her eyebrows with a pert smile, as if to say, Fat chance. “Will it take long?” Munir felt compelled to ask. “Depends,” she said, “on when we hear from India.” “Do all applications get sent to India?” “Only certain ones.” He nodded. He had time. And if he was rejected as a possible threat to that nation, so be it.
But only a week later he was called for an interview; it was scheduled with the consul himself. Munir announced himself at the window on the other wing of the floor, the door was opened for him, and after a short wait alone in a quiet anteroom he was ushered into a large office with an oversized desk. Aditya Sharma, the consul, stood up and came over to shake hands. He had a warm smile. He was a small, unassuming man, wearing a dark Indian vest buttoned at the neck. He tried speaking in Urdu, and failing to get a response from Munir, continued in a plain though fluent English.
“Mr. Khan, I am delighted to meet you. Normally I would not interfere in the visa process, but your application gave me an opportunity to see you in person. I am honoured, sir.”
Munir was at a loss for words. Such humility from a diplomat. People occasionally recognized his name in Toronto, and on rare occasions even his face. It was flattering but also disconcerting. Having gone through periods of literary fame such as accompany the publication of a book, followed by the relative oblivion afterwards, he had reached a phase in his life when, no longer quite a writer, he preferred solitude and anonymity; and yet there was always just that frisson, when vanity got aroused. It annoyed him to succumb to it, for with every instance of recognition came doubts. What did it mean, this flattery; how true was it, and how deserved. Did it matter. It was better to remain unrecognized, unperturbed. To get on with living.
“I am flattered, Mr. Sharma, thank you. Is this to do with my visa? I was told the application would have to be sent to India—”
“Oh, no, no. With your name—”
“I would understand it, of course, these are not easy times we live in.”
“Yes. I am pleased you understand, Mr. Khan. Many people don’t, and complain. But you don’t have to worry. Here is your passport, with the visa. We’ve given you ten years, and for your inconvenience, I’ve waived your fee.”
“Thank you, Mr. Sharma. I am obliged.”
Munir took his passport and the uncashed money order. They sat down on the sofa, which was set towards the back wall, and the receptionist brought tea and biscuits. They chatted. Aditya Sharma had only recently taken up his post. He had been previously in Addis Ababa, and before that in Kazakhstan. He had been to Nairobi, stayed at the Masai Mara National Reserve. They talked about literature. Mr. Sharma asked him to recommend Canadian writers he might read. Finally he told Munir, “You should go to the Jaipur Literature Festival. In Jaipur. Rajasthan. Why haven’t you done so? I’ll get you invited. The organizers are known to me.”
“Thank you,” Munir said, though he was done with festivals too, but there was no point in sounding rude or arrogant.
He parted on the warmest terms with the consul. They agreed to meet again, and the consul invited him to the annual Indian Independence Day reception the following August.
* * *
—
There were the medical preparations, beginning with a visit to his doctor, who prescribed a bevy of prophylactics. There was advice from people—to drink only bottled water, to refuse ice, not to eat salads and fruit however enticing they looked. Absolutely no street food. There were all the means devised for travellers to carry money safely on their person. A SIM card was essential. He should carry passport-sized photos of himself. He flew via London, where there was a long stopover, which he spent walking along the city streets familiar to him from the past. He dipped into a few bookstores and paid a quick visit to the National Gallery. It was late evening when he boarded his onward flight. The terminal was quiet at this time, but there was a long trail of fellow passengers—grandmothers in wheelchairs, couples with noisy children, businessmen, backpackers, and quiet men and women who had the look, Munir felt, of going home. He recognized spoken Punjabi, the language his elders had spoken in Nairobi. Two elderly men trotted along with their carry-ons on their shoulders like farmers.
He found himself observing the returning Indians closely, with fascination. Am I like them? One of them? Ever since watching the young couple who had moved into his street (he had seen them twice since then and once had greeted the man), followed by his meeting with the Indian consul, he had begun to sense a greater awareness in him of other Indians. Had his marriage deprived him of this connection? Perhaps; but he had thought of himself as a Kenyan, and he was now also a Canadian. In Nairobi, emulating the English had been the norm among his Asian age group. There was an awareness of ancestry and family connection, but that was it. Perhaps now, as he passed his middle age, the ancestors had come knocking, demanding homage. He smiled. In high school, his friend Peter had invited him to his father’s second marriage, to a young woman of his own tribe, which was Bukusu. Peter’s mother was a Kikuyu, but now his father needed pure-breed sons who would say the proper rites for him when he died. This had sounded funny then. Was he, Munir Khan, now going through a similar phase? He had his daughter to think of; he had hardly given her anything of his own heritage.
* * *
—
In Delhi, he put up at the Delhi Recreational Club, or DRC, booked for him courtesy of the Indian consul in Toronto. It was a quiet complex set off from a moderately busy road, with a fountain and lovely front garden in which all the flora were neatly labelled; it provided everything he would need for his two weeks. The residential rooms were in the main building; across a stone patio were a formal dining room and an informal cafeteria called “the lounge.” The food was decent, there was internet and room service. Adjoining the Club behind it was a park called Sikandar Gardens, where people went for walks, or did their yoga at dawn; at various places among the vast variety of trees and flowers stood the pink-and-white stone remains of past centuries, silent memorials to sultans and nobles. At the back of the main building was a small and discreet bar with glass walls, accessible from the back garden; it threw its doors open promptly at six in the evenings to its eagerly awaiting patrons. The library was excellent and there he would look up arbitrary historical subjects, toying with ideas for stories. Perhaps he was not done with writing yet. A ten-minute walk away from the Club was the fortuitously named Khan Market, where he could buy fruit and browse in the two small bookstores packed to their ceilings. He contemplated reserving a seat on a tour bus to go to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. That surely was a must. Meanwhile he visited by taxi the Qutub Minar, a lean and elegant tower of red sandstone in the south of the city, from where the first Turkish sultans had ruled, having defeated the local Rajput kings in the tenth century; and the Purana Qila, which was the site of the earliest city of Delhi, called Indraprastha, from the time of the epic Mahabharata. From here the five Pandava brothers had ruled in that hoary past. Delhi offered endless history. He was excited, up to the moderation that his nature demanded; his own history began here in this great, tumultuous city.
He was regularly one of the first ones in the bar and easily found a table, leaving early after a vodka and tonic (or two) and a snack for his supper. The tables around him were always lively and he caught intriguing snatches of conversations about the nation’s politics or the lives of children abroad, their placements at Juilliard or Wharton, their upcoming marriages, their jobs at Microsoft or Google. His eavesdropping was a habit Aileen had found annoying, because he tended then to drift away from her presence.
On his first Saturday in Delhi, three days after he arrived, at about eight o’clock a rush of people flocked into the bar and it suddenly filled up. The room became raucous, the air turned misty. He gathered from the excited chatter that a good number of the guests had returned from an afternoon at the Jaipur Literature Festival. He couldn’t hold on to his table by himself for long, it was clear, and soon enough a woman came and sat down with an audible sigh of relief, then politely turned to him and asked for permission.
“Please,” he replied in consent. “I’m alone, and you are most welcome. I’m leaving soon anyway.”
“Oh no, not on my account, I hope!” She smiled.
“No, I was about to get up,” Munir returned the smile.
“Oh. But don’t hurry. Some table will vacate soon. I’m waiting for my husband to join me.” She turned and looked anxiously around, then asked, “Were you at Jaipur? I think I saw you there. That was some session, wasn’t it—English versus Hindi? Fireworks! Are you an author yourself?”
He hesitated before replying, “Yes, but I wasn’t there. This is a personal visit.”
“I must have seen your picture somewhere. I am Mohini, by the way. And my husband is Ravi. I wonder where he is. We’ve just returned from Jaipur. It was quite wonderful. We heard Ronnie Kohinore, do you know him?”
“Of him. I’m Munir Aslam Khan, from Toronto.”
She quickly looked around again, the waiter stopped by and Munir, with her permission, ordered her a red wine. She accepted a cutlet from his plate. She looked edgy, perhaps didn’t want to be seen sitting with a male stranger who couldn’t help staring at her. The fair, oval face with a high brow, a sparkle on the forehead; the hair pulled into a long braid at the back, the soft brown liquid eyes. The husky voice laced with a slight edge, and the delicious accent. The sari was brilliant beige, silk. She shone.