Belonging by Umi Sinha Page A

and shape and pin. It was fun and I was looking forward to accompanying Mrs. Beauchamp, but Aunt Mina refused to allow it. The papers were full of it the next day – they said it was thegreatest demonstration ever held in Britain. I was deeply disappointed at not being able to go, and it made me resent Aunt Mina even more.

Henry
17th February 1869
    A woman has come to live in the bibighar. Father brought her home with him soon after Aunt Mina left. When I asked him who she was he told me she is someone he used to know a long time ago.
    The bibighar is just an outhouse in the compound – one room with a small bathroom at the back. It used to be full of old furniture but before the woman came Father ordered Kishan Lal to get it cleared out and whitewashed, and had some rugs, a string bed, a low table and a lamp put in. There is a curtain at the door and window.
    Kishan Lal says the woman arrived in a covered litter, which was carried right to the door, and he only caught a glimpse of her, but I heard him say to Allahyar, ‘Judging by her dress she’s a Muslim, but then that’s hardly a surprise.’ Then Allahyar got cross and told Kishan Lal he was the son of a raandi who plied her trade in the bazaar, and Kishan Lal called Allahyar a bhenchod, and Allahyar picked up the kitchen knife, so I stepped in and asked what raandi and bhenchod meant. I know they’re rude words because Ali told me, and I knew that would stop them fighting.
    They both looked at me and Allahyar said, ‘Get out of here with your notebook, you little spy,’ and Kishan Lal told him not to speak to me like that and then he told me to keep out of other people’s business and that my notebook would get me into trouble one of these days. I said Mr. Mukherjee had told me to write it and then they both agreed you could never trust a Bengali and said I’d better not show him anything I’d written about them.
20th February 1869
    This afternoon I took my books into the compound to work. When Kishan Lal asked what I was doing I said it was cold in the house and I wanted to sit in the sun.
    ‘You’d better make sure your father doesn’t catch you hanging around her,’ he said. ‘He won’t like it.’
    ‘Why not?’ I asked, but he wouldn’t tell me.
    The woman did not come out all afternoon. I saw the mali’s wife taking her a tray of food just before we had dinner, so she can’t be a servant. She doesn’t seem to have a name either. Kishan Lal and Allahyar always say ‘her’ if they have to speak of her. ‘Take her her dinner.’
28th February 1869
    I have heard the woman going to Father’s room at night. She plays an instrument that has a strange twangy sound, and sings. Sometimes they talk and sometimes they’re quiet. Once I heard her crying. I have decided not to listen any more.
    I still spend most evenings and weekends at the Lines with Father, watching tent-pegging or wrestling. Mohan, Ali and I have started to wrestle too, but Ali is the strongest, eventhough he is younger than Mohan and I. He says it’s because he’s a Pathan, but Mohan asked how it is that Dhubraj Ram can beat his father, then, and then they fought and Ali won and Mohan went off sulking. I told Ali about the woman. He said he had heard his father talking about it with the other men. The woman is Father’s bibi. A bibi is a bad woman who lives with a man when they aren’t married. He says lots of Englishmen used to keep bibis before the memsahibs came and that’s why the outhouse is called a ‘bibighar’, which means ‘bibi’s house’. I feel sorry for her. It can’t be nice living alone in that tiny room and no one speaking to her and never seeing anyone except Father.
7th April 1869
    The weather is hotter now and the bibi has started leaving her door open with just the curtain hanging and sometimes when there is a breeze I can see in a little bit. Yesterday I was practising playing ball against the side of her house when Kishan Lal came out and told me