Free Home To India by Jacquelin Singh

would be a Member of the Legislative Assembly of Rajasthan, an M.L.A.!
    Pitaji looked uneasy. It was no secret that when funds were low, Uncle Gurnam Singh would take a loan from a relative (usually Pitaji) to tide himself over, and everyone knew that election campaigns cost money—the more so as this one would be the first in independent India. All that driving around from village to village through the Bikaner sand dunes in the diesel-hungry, trouble-prone jeep, all that entertaining and feasting to create a political base , as Uncle termed it! Party funds would cover only a fraction of what he would have to spend; the rest would have to come from his own (or some other individual’s) pocket.
    â€œI’m going to need your help, Bhaji,” Uncle Gurnam Singh went on. “I need smart workers, people around who can lend a hand with things. Do you think you could spare Hari for a few weeks?”
    Pitaji leaned back on his charpoy against the still rolled up bedding he used as a bolster and gave a soft groan of relief. “Why not?” he said. “We can manage by ourselves for a few days, can’t we, beta ?” he asked Tej.
    Tej said yes. What else was there for him to say? But I knew he was rapidly calculating how much more of his precious time looking up some newly-found musician friends in Ladopur or practicing the sitar was going to be usurped by the work he hated, when Hari would not be there to do his share. Hari of course brightened at the prospect of a few days away from the farm and the excitement of going along with Uncle. For my part, I wondered if Hari would indeed be back in a “few weeks,” in time for Tej and me to get on with our much-delayed wedding. It was to be a civil ceremony, and for that we needed to go forty miles away to the District Headquarters in Ambala. The date was not ours to choose, but waited on the convenience of the District Commissioner who was to officiate. In all these weeks he had not answered our letter asking for an appointment.
    â€œI’ll go to Bikaner too,” Mataji declared. “Bhabhi Gursharan Kaur will have lots to do,” she added pointedly. It was the opportunity for Mataji to see for herself what was going on inside Uncle Gurnam Singh’s household, and she was not going to let it go. She would size up the situation, see what Gursharan Kaur was going through, would get her brother to see reason and realize what a shameful position he had got himself into with the concubine. I played out the scene in my imagination as Rano, her large eyes earnest and intent, whispered translations of snatches of the conversation there in the dark, illumined now by a single kerosene lantern on the unpainted wooden table by Pitaji’s charpoy. For one fleeting instant, something in her expression, something about her eyes—not on the surface, but deep inside the pupils from where the person who was Rano looked out on the world—reminded me of Tej. I felt drawn to her on his account; I felt an immediate kinship.

Monsoon

6
    The family pattern broke up the next day like shifting pieces of a kaleidoscope. Mataji and Hari went off to Bikaner with Uncle (who had yet another loan from Pitaji in his pocket, got at the last minute). Because Nikku made a great fuss, he too was squeezed into the overloaded jeep, on the lap of Brother John, which he shared with the shotgun. Dilraj Kaur had to attend a wedding in her brother Arjun Singh’s village in Faridkot, and one of the Amritsar cousins—Sukhdev?—was deputed to escort her there, gentlewomen never being left to travel alone. Tej and Pitaji, Rano and Goodi, and I stayed back to see to the Majra house and to await the monsoon.
    All but the minimum of farm work came to a standstill amidst the hushed waiting. The dust-haze and the humidity returned, clamped down even tighter over the part of the earth we occupied. In a wash of homesickness, I tried to remember what July in