CLICK ON THE BOTTOM TO REACH FULL BLOG.
Twenty-five years! Silver wedding! Taking stock of our married life is a task I'll begin another time, or perhaps never. But I do have the vivid memory of our wedding in Belgaum, Karnataka State, India.
Fulmaya and I were married by a kind of default. You see, it was a variation of marriage by capture. According to Fulmaya, her father kidnapped her mother for the statutory 3-days according to Yolmu tradition, presented her parents with the customary jug of chang or rice-beer and they, having drunk from the chalice, had agreed to the matrimonial splice. Something along those lines anyway.
We eloped to Delhi on separate planes.
You see, FM, in charge of her school in Kathmandu, had decided to leave all behind and throw herself in with the fates, surrendering herself to her destiny kind of thing. Her parents and relatives would never have approved of her marrying outside of her caste. Probably she felt like most pregnant women do. A baby in the womb is a distraction that left her bereft of any apprehension of an external reality, except the reality of her condition.
I, on the other hand, had to leave the country having a British passport but no visa as my application was always one-year in arrears and there didn't seem a possibility that it would be extended. "We have people here studying how to put on a sari," one clerk informed me in the home office during one of my frequent visits to see if my visa had been retrospectively approved. I suppose that he'd seen enough of milky white foreigners lying about on the steps of the temples smoking ganja and stuffing cakes and sweets down their necks.
We left Kathmandu, I having to pay Rs1000 to a brother of a friend who worked at the airport, and leave with no luggage for a reason that was never fully explained to me. There was something about not having to go through customs that would help to exonerate my trespassing of immigration law, I suppose. FM brought my baggage on the following flight. I vividly remember furtively passing through the departure lobby with all the staff staring at me out of the corner of their eyes. Of course, they all knew what was happening and the great pretence hung in the air, palpable, like a pungent cloud of guilt.
In Delhi, I stood on a raised concourse and watched FM arrive pushing an over-heavy trolley towards customs. Thereafter, there is a vaguely etched memory of our meeting on the ground level of the air terminal.
Where did we stay? I can't remember exactly. Only that we were severely ripped off by a taxi driver who took us to a hotel about five-minutes away from the airport and we lodged there
We booked a train to Bombay. How long the journey took is a cloudy memory. I tied myself into a luggage rack/bed above the seated passengers and tried to sleep. It was impossible.
Arriving in Bombay, we booked into a surprisingly quiet hotel near the busy Victoria station for a few hours and rested. The hotel was in the middle of the city centre. Passing through the bus station, on the ground was a well-dressed boy with shirt and tie lying on sheets of newspaper. So incongruous to be in a deep sleep amongst all that noise and filth. Where does he come from? Where does he work? Why is he sleeping in the middle of the day, unaware of the noise of people and traffic all around him? This was Bombay.
Leaving FM in the hotel to rest, I went out to explore the streets. "Buy me some underwear," she ordered on my way out of the door. Now, this is something I'd never done before. I found a shop, haberdashery I imagine it said in Devanagari script. A man stood at the counter and I asked him for the various accoutrements that women wear. Not sure of the size, he obliged by holding nighties against himself, turning out bras and stretching knickers on the counter. Short of mincing around on the shop floor and pirouetting with a pout, he did rather well and I left with a plastic bag full of stuff that began to disintegrate the moment I left the shop...the bag, that is...and I tottered along with an armful of ladies' underwear flouncing about in the breeze
Oh the horror! I didn't have a scoobie doo where I was. Had I seen that sign before? The sweet shop with piles of julebi and Indian cakes was new to me. A bus station I hadn't seen before loomed up on my right. Where did that barber's shop appear from?
One hour later and I can't remember what street I had been in and nothing appeared familiar in the least. Suddenly, I heard an air-piercing scream. All the traffic stopped and there was a sudden hushed silence. Apparently, a bus had run over a pedestrian's foot. The bus rolled on and, supported by some bystanders, the man limped to the pavement where he removed his shoe and massaged his foot.
Turning round where I had stopped, there was a black sign with yellow writing at the entrance to a dark doorway. Vaguely visible was a stairway at the back of the close and with my heart pounding I realised that this was the entrance to the hotel. To the right, a clerk eyed me as I ascended the stairs till I had disappeared round the wall of the first floor. Pushing the door of what I guessed to be our room, I gingerly peered round the door. There was FM lying on the bed dozing away.
To have left Fulmaya in Bombay without a paisa is still a nightmare I recall.
Having a few hours left before our departure to Belgaum on an overnight bus, we left our luggage and toured around the city
We wandered off to Bombay Gate. I was reminded of "A Passage to India" and Mrs Quested. Like her, I was filled with a feeling of apprehension and a manifest sense of danger. Watching out for pickpockets, we stood there beside the archway gazing at the Indian Ocean. The gate seemed out of place here in the heat. Built to commemorate a visit by King George V and Queen Mary, one can only wonder at the foreignness of it all, this basalt and reinforced concrete structure. Typical of India, the government never did get around to building the approach road which was meant to sweep elegantly down to the harbour. A touch on my arm soon reminded me where I was.
Behind me stood a beggar of indeterminate age. He stood there, skinny and about four-feet tall, repeatedly touching my arm and pointing to his mouth. Another beggar appeared suddenly. I felt my passport bag and scowled and pulled FM away. We caught a taxi and returned to the hotel.
The next day we reached Belgaum, was met by a friend, Mohie Jefferbhoy, and lodged with him and his family for the next two-months in a street called Shiva Ji Nagar. The house was a rambling villa on its own grounds. I never fully explored the complex arrangement. Jeffer had one blood brother and five-step brothers as well as two-sisters whose bloodline I was not aware of. One brother, Altaf, was also married and had his wife with him. His mother and step father also lived in the house and I quickly realised that Jeffer had a hatred for the man. Mulla was always busy as he had a tax office near the house where people would come for driving licenses and paperwork to do with their vehicles. Having connections in the local government, his dealings were furtive with people turning up and passing envelops over his desk. But this was India.
On one side of the road was a jumbled row of houses of all shapes and colours. On the other side of the road was a hill at the top of which stood a shrine to Shiva. (Visiting 25-years later the whole of the hill had been built over with houses.)
We lived amidst this kind and generous family for two-months before I realised that Jeffer was using me to frustrate his father-to raise his anger at the overcrowding in his house. Jeffer would always have a bottle of fenny, a cardamom spirit on the table at lunch time; and we would be light-headed after the meal. This, again, was a form of retribution from Jeffer to cause pain to his stepfather who had married his mother when he had "been only fit to clean [his] mother's shoes." Who Jeffer's real father was, despite asking him, I never found out and no one else in the family seemed to know, shrugging their shoulders and looking vaguely away.
During this time bans were placed in the the registrar office in Camp, one of those British attempts to build an enclave in verisimilitude to what they had back in Blighty. A sprawl of low bungalows filled the grounds with the only acknowledgment to the climate being their whitewashed walls. Outside clerks and scribes sat clanking away on old typewriters, piles of court papers on makeshift desks and around them loomed the clients, standing or seated according to their financial status. Lawyers flew around like incongruous ravens, their black tails swishing behind them in the dust.
The office for the registration of marriages also served as a land registration office. Behind the desk sat a surly, dark and fleshy officer. From outside a beam of sunlight caught swirling motes of dust; and in a back room papers rustled and staff spoke in muted voices. Occasionally, one would rise languorously with a sheaf of papers and wander of somewhere else along a corridor. "Where is Kafka," I thought. There was an overwhelming feeling of not really existing.
The date had been set, April 10, 1984. "Not today," the officer said. "Come back tomorrow!" he ordered. I can't remember my response except I have a clear image of Fulmaya and I turning away and going back to our lodgings.
The next day we appeared again, accompanied by Jeffer, and had to stand in a queue of various people holding sheafs of paper and looking agitated. Outside, the temperature was soaring and there seemed to be a static in the dry air. In front of me was a wizened little man in a black Nehru suit with a high collar who had a jolly air about him. The clerk seemed in a better mood and after the signing of some papers and the passing of an envelop he lumbered up and shook hands with his client.
"Ready to be married?" he asked with a smile on his face. Everyone in the office stirred and a hubbub of excited voices rose as the peons lazing around outside peered round the doorway to see what was happening. "Where are your witnesses?" he asked.
"Eh...I didn't think of that," I replied. Truly, the idea of witnesses had not crossed my mind.
Jeffer came to the fore, "Witnesses...my brother works across the road at the bank, I'll bring him," he said. Quickly, left the office to search for his brother Altaf at the bank.
As happens in India, any event slightly out of the ordinary attracts a gathering of people. I noticed the little man who had preceded me on the periphery of the crowd who had appeared in the office. He came towards me with a smile, bowed slightly and shook my hand. "I'm Professor Khan. So, you've come to be married. And this is your bride?" His shiny black eyes swiveled upwards as if to relish the nuptial bliss in store for me. "I have an ayervedic college of medicine not far from here."
"Ah, very good," I ventured, still thinking about Jeffer and his brother and when they would arrive as the wedding was turning into a bit of an ordeal with the pressing crowd and the rising heat in the room. Meanwhile the clerk attended to his papers on the desk, placing the envelop carefully in the drawer and locking it.
"Yes, the officer is in a good mood today. I've just given him Rs40,000 for a land deal. I've acquired some land to extend my house. You know, I have four wives and not much room left, what with the children and visitors."
I looked incredulously at this man with his long teeth and faced creased in a smile. "He must be about 80," I thought.
Yes, come to my house for a meal, please." He extracted a piece of paper from his coat pocket, wrote his address on it and passed it to me.
Suddenly, Jeffer appeared with his brother and a silence descended on the expectant crowd. The officer read from a paper and I repeated his words: Fulmaya did the same and then...we were married.
"Congratulations!" The officer shook my hand and declared, "Where are the flowers and the cakes?"
Jeffer said, "I'll bring it. don't worry," and again disappeared through the crowd and out of the door.
Returning after about five-minutes, Jeffer pushed his way back in to the room clutching two-marigold mallas for around our necks and several boxes of little Indian sweets wrapped in slivers of silver paper. The officer called his workers from the other room and the sweets were passed around. He then placed the mallas around our necks and shook my hand, slapping me on the back in open geniality that is the eastern way. From there, we progressed in a motor rickshaw provided by Dostof, a friend of Jeffer's family, to the house at Shiva Ji Nagar.
Soon after, we did visit Prof Khan who lived in a rambling wooden house. Around the upper wall of his main room was a curtained seraglio where women could sit and observe through the muslin the happenings below without being exposed to strangers' eyes. A woman, I presumed, one of his four wives, came in to the room bowed down by both a tray of plates containing curry and her conditioned obeisance.
So we moved out. We moved to a tiny house with a kitchen at the front and a bed at the back. FM waddled around getting heavier and heavier. Next door lived some Nigerian students and when FM finally gave birth one said, "Oh my God! That's terrible!." Seeing the incredulous look on my face he added, "I mean, I didn't know she was pregnant." Her sari disguised her condition
The following two-years is a rush of activity concerning a statue of Shakespeare outside a private school, learning to use an Olivetti type-writer to ghost-write a novel for a Professor Rawoot, celebrating the biggest festival in India, Ganesh Tarturti and the birth of my son on the same day, and running a boys' boarding school in the hill station of Panhala for the Novo riche sugar cane factories.
