Everything Sounds Better in Urdu
By Shilpi Suneja
“In our town streets have religions,” my grandfather says. He is lying in bed, his head tilted on the pillow, his eyes reflecting the endless, uninterrupted sky. Behind him the peacock on the sandalwood headboard daren't cast a shadow, relegated as it is behind the forest green curtains. Grandfather’s bed has a name. He calls it the majlis-e-dard-e-khoob, which he translates as the gathering of infinite sighs. It sounds better in Urdu, he insists.
Image by Nate Heilman, nateactual.com
Grandfather's room is like the diwan-e-aam of the Red Fort, the hall where Emperor Shah Jahan once received the masses. While Shah Jahan’s hall was open on all four sides, grandfather's room is open on two—the east faces the balcony and the world outside, the west faces an inner courtyard and the world inside. Like the emperor, an endless array of people come to see our grandfather--our mother with cups of tea and medicines, Ila and I, his grandchildren with requests for stories, and the weavers and the printers from his sari workshop with queries and concerns about the business. Grandfather deals with us all in the same equanimity I expect the great Mughal emperor showed to all those who came to him--his hands cleanly stacked one on top of the other, and his eyes on the sky and the birds that routinely fill it.
“Are you watching a particular bird?” Ila asks.
“The bird I look for has flown to the city of djinns.”
"Does that city have a name in Urdu?"
Grandfather nods. "Firdaus. Doesn't it sound better in Urdu?"
Ila and I mimic our grandfather, the whistle of the first consonant "ffff," the dense grandeur of the ending "daus."
The way he closes his eyes, with a finality, we know that Grandfather isn't talking about a bird but about our nani, Attiya Rehman, our beloved grandmother who was taken to Pakistan long ago, long before we were even born, and never returned.
*
To have a ghost for a grandmother means there is a chair on the dinner table that is always empty. It means we watch Grandfather approach that chair with trepidation. He makes a slight bow (imperceptible to adult eyes), then sits at the head of the table. From time to time Ila and I catch him glancing in the empty chair's direction. Often, we've caught him placing bowls of rice, chicken, salad, sweets in front of the empty chair in hopes that Nani might materialize and serve herself and pass the food on to her children and grandchildren. When this happens, our mother rises, vexed. She tiptoes to the bowls and retrieves them. Her sigh makes it clear that this is illogical behavior on Grandfather's part. But the way she clutches the bowls, the rims digging into her flesh, we know that she feels sorry. Grandfather is a patient, her eyes say. Treat him like a patient.
*
Having a ghost for a grandmother means that Ila and I look away when anyone asks who the Rehman in the Rehman Saris is and isn't that a Muslim name and are we Muslim. It means we watch the shopkeepers quietly while the boxes from our grandfather's workshop are opened, the saris unfurled, and waterfalls of burgundies and maroons and turquoise and fuschias streak our faces. We take pride in the saris, in the work that our mother puts into designing them, in the work that the weavers put into weaving them. But we pause at the small white label pasted on the corner of each piece of fabric. Even though we know that the women wearing the saris will eventually peel the sticker off, or it will come out with the first wash, and the Rehman name will find its way to the dustbin or the drain, and eventually disintegrate into the soil, we feel shame. One of the meanings of 'Rehman' is mercy. Another meaning is grace. And even though there are Hindi words that could mean the same things, Grandfather has kept the Urdu one because, he believes, everything sounds more beautiful in Urdu.
*
To have a ghost for a grandmother means that sometimes we get lost on our way home from school because we follow old women who might look like her, because we continue to believe, like Grandfather does, that our grandmother will one day step off the train at Kanpur Central and find us on the street and claim us as her own. Once we followed an old woman up Meston Road, past the Fish Mosque, past the gun shops, past the Sabzi Mandi, until we reached the Kanpur Central railway station. The old woman turned into a tight lane, translated into a speck, disappeared up a narrow set of stairs. Ila wanted to follow her into her house, but I refused. The woman undoubtedly had her own set of grandchildren, an Ila girl with pigtails and a Karan boy who wore glasses like me. I turned us in the direction of home, but I couldn’t remember whether the road past the sweetmeats shop would lead us back or the road past the election commission office. And so we stood on the junction on Mall Road, facing the Murphy's Radio baby with his finger in his mouth and waited until afternoon turned into evening and evening turned into night and Grandfather and Mother came to fetch us, Mother furious and Grandfather solemn because he had some idea of why our limbs might freeze into inaction sometimes.
*
Having a ghost for a grandmother means that we cannot use Grandfather's phone, the one he keeps on the circular table next to his bed, because the Office of Missing Persons has the number to that line, and the even though the office is defunct and its clerks no longer restore missing persons, someone from that office might still call grandfather with news about our grandmother. They might catch her crossing a street or buying bananas, and then she might come back to him and they would be reunited. Some portion of his life would turn out in the colors of the saris that he weaves with her name on it. Unlike our mother, Ila and I do not doubt. Ila and I believe, because as Grandfather says, one day our saris will earn so much renown they will be famous in Pakistan, and then Grandmother will have no choice but to come back to us and claim us as her own.
*
Ila and I don’t tell Grandfather that we are happy to have a ghost for a grandmother. That is better than having a Muslim for a grandmother, because the government and the neighbors can't come for us and tell us we are changing the religion of the lane and thereby the town, the state, and the nation. Nobody bothers about ghosts. It is only the living that have religion. The dead can do what they like--pray at a mosque then pray at a temple, wear a sari on top of a salwar kameez, eat meat one week then give it up the next. Ila has seen our grandmother do these things. Sometimes the young woman in the photos in Grandfather’s room comes to life and walks about the house. I could see her if I wanted to. All I had to do is stay awake and wait.
