Image of art by Nasreen Mohammedi (1937–1990).
Ismat Chugtai
(Translated from Urdu by Ayesha Kidwai)
Amidst Fatehpur Sikri’s desolate ruins, Gori Dadi’s house was an old dried-up wound that irked. This cramped little two-storied house, made of bricks of burnt clay, looked like a smacked child in a sulk. One sensed that in its convulsions, Time, grown exasperated by its obstinacy had spared it, had turned its havoc on the regal state and splendour next to it.
In her white spotless clothes, seated on the snowy-white sheet covering her takht, Gori Dadi seemed to be a sepulchre made of marble. Masses of white hair, a pale, bloodless skin soft as malmal, and light blue eyes filmed over with age, at first glance, Gori Dadi was pure white. One’s eyes would be blinded by her gleaming whiteness. It was as if a fine dust of moonbeams misted around her.
She had been living for so long. People used to say that she was over a hundred years old. What did those eyes, open so wide but so dulled and without light, witness all these years? What were her thoughts, how did she live all this while? She had been married to my mother’s paternal granduncle when she was twelve or thirteen, but he had never even raised her bridal veil. She had spent a century of virginity in these ruins.
As much as Gori Bi was white, her bridegroom was pitch black. So dark that a lamp would throw no light in his presence; even though Gori Bi was extinguished, smoke still wafted from her lamp.
Every evening after eating dinner, we children would snuggle into the quilts, our laps full of dry fruits. The turning over the pages of days gone by would begin. However many times we heard it, we could never get our fill of the curious tale of Gori Bi and Kāle Mian, and it would have to be retold. That poor fool must have taken leave of his senses not to have lifted the veil of such a fair bride!
Every year, my mother would bear down on her maternal home with her forces and their full encampment. For the children, the holiday was an Eid all day, the days spent playing hide and seek in the mysterious ruins of Fatehpur Sikri. As evening fell, the desolate, grey environs began to make one fearful. Shadows leapt out from every direction; alarmed, hearts would start to thud.
‘Kāle Mian is coming!’ we would call out to frighten each other, as stumbling over ourselves, running pell-mell, we would rush back to crouch in the embrace of that old two-storied clay-brick house. But there too, it seemed as if in every corner, the ghost of Kāle Mian crouched hidden.
Gori Bi’s parents had the good fortune to behold their beloved child, only after several of their offspring had perished and supplications were made at Saleem Chishti’s dargāh. The apple of her parents’ eyes, Gori Bi was a very stubborn child. Every other thing would lead to her taking to her bed in petulance. She would be on hunger strike, the food would not be touched, and would be conveyed to the mosque as it was. If Gori Bi did not eat, how could her Amma and Baba have even a morsel of it?
It all started with a trifling thing. When Gori Bi was engaged to Kāle Mian, some people taunted, ‘A fair bride for a black groom!’
But Mughal-born are not accustomed to such jest. The sixteen or seventeen year old Kāle Mian burnt in anger, shrivelling at the slights.
‘The bride will become dirty! Don’t you dare lay your black hands on her!’
‘Our girl has been cosseted all her life—if your shadow falls on her, you will blacken her!’
‘What airs she has! You will be carrying her shoes after her all your life!’
When the British performed the last rites on the Mughal empire, no one suffered more than Mughal-born did, because they were the most numerous amongst the officers of the realm. As their lands and ranks were snatched from them, lakhs of households were ruined in a short while. Dumped back by circumstance into their old dilapidated ancestral houses like useless old things, there they remained, somewhat astounded that anyone had the temerity to pull the rug out from beneath their feet.
The Mughal-born could do little else but draw the tattered shawl of prestige and self-esteem closer around themselves, and retreat further and further into themselves. In any case, the Mughal-born are usually a little askew. The distinguishing mark of a pure Mughal is always that a few screws in his brain have either come loose or are screwed on too tight. The tumble from the heavens to the earth upset the mental equilibrium, the values of life became confounded, and emotions rather than reason came to guide action.
Employment with the British was a curse, and manual labour was beneath them, so the little that was left was lived off by selling it bit by bit. My father’s paternal uncle had no money as inheritance, so he sold off the silver plating the legs of the marriage bed his wife had brought as her dower. After the gold and silver jewellery and then the crockery had been run through, it was the turn of gold and silver brocade and trim to be snatched at and consumed. Sheets of silver that once partitioned pāndāns into small compartments were hammered flat on grinding stones and the pieces sold as well.
The men of the household would lounge around all day testing the bed-ropes, and then every evening, slip into their worn old sherwānis and take off to play a game of chess. The women of the household sewed for a living on the sly. Or they would teach the Quran to children of the neighbourhood, and receive a monetary tribute. The pittance they got would keep the stove burning for a while longer.
For Kāle Mian, his friends’ taunts and teasing was a canker in his soul. Yet, just as the appointed time of death can never be postponed, a marriage scheduled by one’s parents can never be averted. Thus, Kāle Mian, his head bowed in submission, became a bridegroom. But just at the moment when the bridegroom steps the women’s quarters under the shade of his sister’s dupatta to behold his bride’s face for the first time, some thoughtless girl remarked, ‘Be careful! If you lay a hand on the bride, she will turn black!’
The wounded Mughal-born, grievously stung, reared up like a cobra. Throwing off his sister’s ānchal from his head, he turned around and walked straight out.
Laughter sputtered out, and an air of mourning replaced it. Although the news of this tragedy was laughed away in the men’s quarters, for the women, the fact that the bride would be bade farewell to without the custom being performed was nothing short of an apocalypse.
‘I swear to God that I shall pulverise her arrogance to dust! She should learn that it isn’t some nobody that she has come up against, I am a Mughal-born!’, Kāle Mian fumed.
That wedding night, Kāle Mian lay stretched across the bed like a rafter, the bride cowered in a corner, wrapped up like a bale. How much space could a twelve year old girl take up anyway?
‘Raise your veil!’ Kāle Mian roared.
The bride scrunched up into an even tighter bundle.
‘I say, lift up that ghūnghat now!’ Kāle Mian said, raising himself up on one elbow.
Her friends had told her, the bridegroom will fold his hands and beg you, clutch at your feet, but do not let him lay a finger on your veil. The more a bride withholds herself, the more she resists, the more immaculate she will be considered to be.
‘Look here, you may be royalty in your own house. For me, you are no more than a shoe that shods my foot. Raise that veil at once, I am no servant of your father to be disobeyed!’
The bride stayed unmoving, as if struck by palsy.
Kāle Mian sprung up like a cheetah. He picked up his shoes and tucking them into his armpit, jumped through the window into the garden. Taking a train the next morning, he huffed off to Jodhpur.
The household was stunned into silence. One Ekka Bi who had accompanied the bride had been awake all that night, her ears straining to catch the sound of the bride’s moans. But when not a squeak emanated from the bridal chamber all night, her hopes began to sink. ‘Hai, what a brazen girl this one is! The more virginal and innocent a girl is, the louder the cacophony she should make.’
And then Ekka Bi also thought to herself, ‘Could there be some defect in Kāle Mian himself?’
The thought made her want to jump into a well and be shot of the whole saga.
When Ekka Bi peeped cautiously into the room, she was aghast. The bride sat there untouched, and the bridegroom had vanished!
Much unseemly controversy ensued. Swords were drawn. Haltingly, the bride narrated what she had gone through. This led to greater muttering. The family came to be divided into two camps, one that sided with Kāle Mian, the other of Gori Bi’s supporters.
‘He is after all the lord incarnate. To disobey his command is a sin,’ one party averred.
‘Has any bride ever raised her own veil?’, the second party reasoned.
All efforts to get Kāle Mian to return and lift his bride’s veil were in vain. He enlisted in the cavalry in Jodhpur. From there, he despatched money and clothing for Gori Bi’s maintenance, but every time, Gori Bi’s mother would promptly fling it at his mother’s face.
Gori Bi bloomed from a bud into a flower. Every week, she would paint her hands and feet with henna, drape herself in gold and silver-trimmed plaited dupattas, and went on living.
And then it was God’s will that Kāle Mian’s father lay on his deathbed. When the news reached Kāle Mian, he was in such an unusual mood that he rushed home immediately. His father shook off Death’s hand on his shoulder and sat up. He summoned Kāle Mian and spoke with him about the finer intricacies of the customary raising of the bridal veil. Kāle Mian sat through it all with his head bowed. Yet the condition remained unchanged— even if were doomsday were to be summoned by this, the bride would have to lift the veil with her own hands.
‘Abba huzūr, I have made an oath by the Holy Ka’aba, baba. You may cut off my head but I cannot break it.’
The swords of the Mughal-born had rusted years ago. The endless disputes and litigations amongst them had long deprived them of all vigour and enterprise. Left in its stead were foolish obstinacies, nursed fiercely in the breast. No-one therefore asked Kāle Mian why he had sworn such an idiotic oath, one that blighted a life that was otherwise orderly and peaceful.
And so it was that Gori Bi became a bride once more. The house of burnt clay once again was scented with the perfume of flowers and ittar.
Gori Bi’s mother explained, ‘My darling daughter, you are his legally wedded wife. There is no shame in lifting your veil for him. You must satisfy his command—a Mughal-born’s honour will be safeguarded. Your life will be enriched, the flowers of happiness will rain into your lap. And you will fulfil the commands of Allah and his Prophet.’
Gori Bi listened to her, her head lowered. These last seven years had seen a nascent bud burgeon into a ravishing adolescence. It was a tempest of youth and beauty that burst forth from her body.
Woman was Kāle Mian’s greatest weakness. All his senses were concentrated on just that one point. But his oath was like a hooked iron ball embedded in his throat. His imagination had teased him for seven long years. He had snatched away scores of veils in this period. Whoring, dallying with the boys, rearing quails, fancying pigeons, there was no sport that Kāle Mian left unplayed; yet the thought of Gori Bi’s lowered veil still dug its five fingers into his heart. After seven years of worrying it, the blemish had turned into a wound.
Although he believed that this time, his wish would be fulfilled. Gori Bi wasn’t so bereft of wisdom that she would fritter away this last chance at life; all she had to do was just use her two fingers to lightly brush away a corner of it. It wasn’t as if she was being asked to move mountains!
‘Raise your veil!’ Kāle Mian tried to say with tenderness, but Mughal imperiousness gained ascendancy.
Gori Begum sat silent, seething haughtily.
‘This is the last command I shall give. Lift up your ghūnghat now, else you shall rot out your days alone like this. If I leave this time, I shall never return.’
Gori Bi flushed a bright red in anger. If only a spark could have leapt from her burning cheek to set that cursed veil on fire and reduced it to ashes!
Kāle Mian stood in the centre of the room, swaying like a cowrie-backed snake. Then, tucking his shoes under his arm, he climbed down into the garden.
An age passed. The garden was long gone— at the rear end, firewood was piled up in a store. Only two jāmun trees and an old banyan tree remained. The clusters of rose bushes and jasmine shrubs, the mulberry and the pomegranate trees, had all deserted it many years ago.
As long as her mother was alive, she was the one who took care of Gori Bi; when she passed, this duty fell to Gori Bi herself. On every Friday, she would diligently grind the henna and apply it on herself, and it was she who dyed, plaited, and trimmed the dupattas that she still wore. And as long as her in-laws were living, every festival saw her visit them to pay her respects.
This time when Kāle Mian went, he had simply vanished. No one saw a sign of him for decades. His parents wept their eyes out for him, but he, who knows the wildernesses whose dust he churned? Once, there were reports of a sighting in a monastery; on another occasion, he was seen lying on the steps of a temple.
Silver dissolved into Gori Bi’s golden tresses, as Death’s broom continued clearing up around her. The estates and homes nearby kept on being sold off for a pittance, although some older families still held out. Butchers and itinerants settled down as neighbours instead, as old palaces were levelled to lay the foundations of a new world. A grocery store, a dispensary and even a shabby general store sprung up nearby, festooned with garlands of aluminium pots and packets of Lipton tea. A handful of riches was slipping through palsied grips to be frittered away forever, even as a few prudent fingers tried to secure them. Those who until yesterday had sat on the foot of the bed and had bowed deep and low in salāms, now considered it beneath them to even maintain an acquaintance.
Gori Bi’s jewellery slowly made its way into Lalaji’s safe. The walls were collapsing, the roofs were sagging. The few remaining Mughal-born, popping their balls of opium, were tiring themselves out flying their kites into battles, rearing their partridge and quail, and counting the feathers on their pigeons’ tails. The word ‘Mirza’, once a signifier of eminence and awe, was being made a mockery of.
Gori Bi was like that plodding ox tethered to the oil press; she rotated mindlessly on the hook that yoked her to the carriage of life. Loneliness had pitched its tent in her blue eyes. She became the subject of many fabulous tales. That the King of Djinns was so enamoured of her that as soon as Kāle Mian reached out to touch her veil, he would draw his sword and rise up between them. Or that each Friday, after the isha’a namāz, as she read the wazifā, the courtyard would fill up with cowrie-backed snakes. And then the golden-crested King of Snakes would arrive mounted on a python, and sway its head to her recitation. The mere sound of a footfall caused all the serpents to vanish all at once.
When we heard these stories, our hearts would jump up into our throats and be stuck there. We would wake up with a start in the middle of the night, hearing the hiss of snakes, screaming hysterically. But all her life, what kinds of serpents did Gori Bi nurse? How did she carry the burden of this lonely, unfulfilled life? Her lips were never kissed by anyone. What answer did she give to the call of the flesh?
If only this story could end here. But Fate had another trick to play.
After a full forty years, Kāle Mian suddenly appeared on her doorstep. He was afflicted with many incurable illnesses, his body was oozing and rotting in every pore. The stench that emanated from him was unbearable. The only thing that was alive was the unfulfilled desire in his eyes, on the strength of which life still lodged in his breast.
‘Tell Gori Bi to put me out of my misery.’
A bride one year short of sixty prepared herself to make her peace with her estranged bridegroom. Making a henna paste, she adorned her hands and feet; warming water, she cleansed her body, and infused her white tresses with scented oil. Opening her trunk, she took out the worn and weeping bridal dress, and put it on.
Kāle Mian lay on his deathbed. But when Gori Bi, shyly, coyly, slowly, approached the head of the sagging bed with its sticky pillows and its soiled, lumpy mattress on which Kāle Mian lay, life coursed through his dead bones once again. Wrestling with the Angel of Death, Kāle Mian commanded,
‘Gori Bi, raise your veil!’
Gori Bi raised her hands, but before they could reach her veil, they fell to her sides. Kāle Mian had breathed his last.
With great calm, Gori Bi sat down, squatting on her heels, took off her bridal bangles and smashed them, and drew the white veil of widowhood across her forehead.
******
Ismat Chugtai (1915-1991) was a fierce writer who really needs no introduction. Fiercely independent, an early votary of feminine agency she was often referred to as the 'Grande Dame of Urdu fiction', championing free speech and women empowerment. Her outspoken nature marked her out as an early feminist with her writings on sexuality, class conflict, and femininity. Chughtai wrote for many publications in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, and after the heat and dust of the Lahore trial in the early 1940s where she was refused to cave in to pressure to apologise for her story, Lihaaf, she would go on to win acclaim. Lihaaf would become hugely popular; her other creatibe works are Gainda, Intikhab, Terhi Lakeer, Garam Hawa, among a host of others.
Ayesha Kidwai is a Professor of linguistics at Jawaharlal Nehru University. She is also a translator between Urdu/Hindi and English. Her most recent book-length translation is of Anis Kidwai’s Dust of the Caravan was published by Zubaan in 2020.
Ismat Chugtai in The Beacon ‘Lihaaf’ [The Quilt]. Short Fiction by Ismat Chugtai
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