Amriika by M. G. Vassanji Read Free Book Online

voice painfully struggling through musical modulations. In the boy’s experience, though, she always came through, successfully negotiating the musical highs and lows; if you listened carefully you realized there was an authenticity to the singing voice, only it was remarkably eccentric, unlike anything else heard in the mosque. And so he had to watch members of the congregation hold their sides in silent laughter, and wipe their tears, unable to control their mirth. Perhaps she knew this, for she was no fool. The boy once asked her, Why do you sing in public? She, breaking off her humming, replied with a smile he swore was cunning in its look: Why, to praise my Lord!
    He was eight years old.
    It was four o’clock in the afternoon, the long bell signalling the end of school had rung, and the rest of the boys in his class had rushed out for home. Ramji was putting his things away in his bag. He had been delayed because of a bathroom break, which the teacher had allowed only after intense pleading. Now she was waiting for him at the door and chatting with another teacher. Mrs. Nanji was saying, while looking at her pupil, “He lives with his grandmother — all alone, poor child, his mother and father died —” She broke off when she met his eyes.
    As he walked past the two teachers and on homeward, by himself since he had been delayed, he could barely contain his excitement. He realized that he had the answer to the mystery of his life. Ma was his grandmother. This made sense. And his mummy and daddy? They must be that couple in that other pictureon the wall, the “auntie and uncle.” They were young and handsome. The man wore a white suit, dark shirt, and cravat, he had slick wavy hair, and he was smiling; she was in a Western dress, hair done up behind her, in a bun, and was also smiling though not as broadly. They stood side by side, close, he turned at a slight angle towards her, hands brought together lightly in front of him at the chest. The background behind them was a plain dark grey, it was a studio pose. That photo had always had a certain magnetism for him. A few times when he stood under it, staring at the couple, Ma had come and stood behind him.
    When he reached home, as she laid the bread and butter on the table and joined him for tea, he said to her, “Ma — I know. That auntie and uncle in that photo over there are my mummy and daddy!” Her face crumpled, and two tears rolled down her cheeks, one of them dropping into her tea.
    “They are with God,” she said, wiping her eyes, “and they are watching over you.” He watched her as she picked up her cup and took a sip.
    Since then, Ma always let him hold the plate of sweet vermicelli, which they took to mosque on the morning of every Eid to say special prayers for the dead.
    One day, she explained to him the meaning of a song that she often sang. Come let’s go to Sister Hare’s wedding, it went. Sister Hare goes shopping for a sari, the mouse scurries off with invitations, and the cat tries out her new dress. And so the animals lose themselves in preparation. Finally, dancing and singing, the monkeys playing flutes, drums, and tambourines, the wedding party sets off for the groom’s house. But on the way they pass a leopard who lurks up a tree. The happy procession proceeds, oblivious; the leopard pounces; and the victims lie torn limb from limb,their possessions scattered in the forest. Whose wedding is it? — reflect on that, cautions Khoja Bhagat, the mystic author of the song, in his last verse; this life is one such wedding procession; it will come to naught.
    Ma the mystic. On festival nights, as the band played and men and women danced the stick-dance dandia or the circular garba, she would request permission to sing, and in that voice edged with the years she would sing this wedding song, its sound drowning in the tumultuous noise of celebration.
    As the boy grew older he retained much of the reserve that had been the strength of his