Chapter 2: The Story Amma Told

The chai was: ready. Two cups — the steel tumblers that every Garhwali household used, the tumblers that burned your fingers and kept the chai: hot, because in Doiwala, chai was not a beverage but a: temperature. Below hot was: insult.

Amma sat on the stool behind the counter — the stool I kept for her visits, which were: daily, because Amma lived four hundred metres from the bookshop and considered the distance: a pilgrimage she undertook for the purpose of supervising my: life. She held the photograph. The woman in the red choli. The smile. The stage.

"Her name," Amma said, "was Farida Khatoon."

F.K. The initials on the trunk.

"She was a performer. A dancer, a singer — what they called a 'variety artiste' in those days. She performed at the Odeon Theatre in Dehradun and at the clubs in Mussoorie where the British officers spent their leave. This was during the War. The Second War. 1942, 1943 — around there."

"How do you know this?"

"Because your grandfather knew her."

The sentence landed on the counter between the chai tumblers and the cash register — the ancient mechanical register that I refused to replace because it had been my father's and because the sound it made when you pressed the keys was: satisfying in a way that digital machines would never: be. The sentence landed and: sat.

"Grandfather knew a: variety artiste?"

"Your grandfather, before he was your grandfather — before he was Amma's husband, before he was Colonel Rawat of the Garhwal Rifles, before he was: respectable — was a young sepoy posted at the Dehradun cantonment. He was twenty-two. He was: lonely. And he was: captivated."

"Captivated by: Farida Khatoon?"

"Captivated by everything she: was. The dancing. The singing. The way she could hold a room with: a look. Your grandfather went to the Odeon Theatre every Saturday night. He sat in the same seat — third row, aisle, right side. He told me this, beta. Years later. When he was old and the truths that men hide when they are young begin to: leak."

Amma's voice had: changed. Not the sharp, instructional voice that she used for daily communications — the voice that told the dhobi to press the saris properly, that told the sabzi-wallah that his cauliflower was: overpriced, that told her daughter that the bookshop's accounts were: a disgrace. This voice was: softer. The voice of a woman telling a story she had: carried for decades, the way the trunk had carried its: contents — closed, locked, hidden under: quilts.

"Did he — did they—?"

"They were: friends." The word was: deliberate. Chosen. The way a diplomat chose: words — to convey and to: conceal simultaneously. "He would visit her after the shows. She lived in a flat above a shop on Paltan Bazaar, near the clock tower. A small flat. He said it was: full of things. Costumes, gramophone records, books — she read in English, Hindi, and Urdu. Three languages. For a woman in 1942, that was: remarkable."

"For anyone in 1942, that was remarkable."

"Yes. Well. They were friends. He helped her — she had: difficulties. The British officers who attended her shows, some of them were: not gentlemen. Your grandfather, who was: a gentleman despite being a sepoy, provided: protection. Not officially. Personally. He would: be there. At the shows. In the third row. And afterward, he would: walk her home."

"Amma. This sounds like more than: friendship."

Amma set down the chai tumbler. The sound — steel on wood, the specific ring of a tumbler placed with: intention — was: the sound of a boundary being: established.

"What it was," she said, "is what he told me it was. And what he told me it was, was: friendship. A deep, important, lifelong friendship that he: honoured and I: respected. Because your grandfather was many things — a collector, a soldier, a man who came home from Haridwar nautanki smelling of rum — but he was not: a liar."

"Then why was the trunk: hidden?"

"Hidden?"

"Under the quilts. In the back of the attic. Behind the regiment trunks. If Farida was a friend, if the friendship was honourable, why was the trunk: hidden?"

Amma looked at the photograph again. The woman — Farida Khatoon — smiled back from 1942 with the: unchanged smile of a person captured in a moment that had: lasted.

"Because," Amma said, "Farida disappeared."

The word. In the bookshop. Between the Premchand and the Christie, in the narrow storefront on Station Road, in the town where Tuesdays were for: happenings.

"Disappeared?"

"In 1944. After the War turned. After things: changed. She performed her last show at the Odeon in March 1944 and then she was: gone. The flat on Paltan Bazaar was: empty. The costumes were: gone — except the ones in this trunk, which she had given your grandfather for: safekeeping. She said she was going to: Bombay. To try the films. To become: something larger than the Odeon Theatre and the British officers and the Saturday nights."

"And?"

"And: nothing. She went to Bombay and she: vanished. Your grandfather wrote letters. To the film studios, to theatres, to: anyone who might have seen a variety artiste named Farida Khatoon from Dehradun. Nobody had. She had simply: stopped existing."

"People don't stop: existing."

"In 1944, beta, people stopped existing: regularly. The War. The Partition that came after. The: chaos. People disappeared into cities, into new identities, into: the gaps between one India and the: next. Farida could have gone anywhere. Become: anyone. Or—"

"Or: nothing."

"Or: nothing." Amma finished her chai. The steel tumbler: empty. The story: not.

"Your grandfather kept the trunk. For sixty years. He never opened it again after she gave it to him. He said he was: keeping it for her. In case she: came back."

"She never came back."

"No. She never came back. And your grandfather died with the trunk in his attic and a: friend he never: found."

I looked at the trunk. At the costumes. At the photograph of a woman who had been: alive in a way that most people weren't — the burning-brighter way, the performer's way — and who had then: stopped. Become a trunk in an attic. Become: initials on a lid.

F.K. Farida Khatoon. Variety artiste. Dehradun, 1942. Vanished, 1944.

"I'm going to find her," I said.

Amma looked at me. The look that mothers give when their daughters announce: intentions. The look that contains: pride and fear and the specific maternal knowledge that once a Rawat woman decided to do something, the something would be: done, regardless of whether it: should be.

"Make more chai," Amma said. "You're going to need: it."