Cracking India by Bapsi Sidhwa Page A

armpits or crotch. Peter has told us this.

    Their mother is American. She ties her blond hair back in a severe knot and always wears a white cotton sari with wide borders. Sometimes I feel she doubles as one of the marching Salvation Army band-women. She is green-eyed and very white and placid and otherworldly. She carries on with whatever she is doing—which is for the most part a mystery—and pays scant attention to the world. Nothing that her children, or her husband, do can wipe the placid look from her face or disturb her unhurried movements.
    Her husband is not a bad man. Mr. Singh does not beat her or white-slave traffic in her. But he has habits that would drive Mother up the wall... I’ve heard her say so. He roams on long hairy legs in loose cotton drawers, barefoot. He milks his water buffalo himself. He converses loudly in vituperative Punjabi and he clears his throat and spits around—generally conducting himself like a coarse Jat in a village. Mother expects more refined conduct from a man married to an American woman.
    They are infrequent guests.
    This appears to be an evening dedicated to neighborly brotherliness. The other guests are from the Birdwood Barracks: Inspector General of Police and Mrs. Rogers. He is tall, colorless, hefty-moustached, pale-eyebrowed; and she, soft, pretty, plump and submissive—with a fascinating proclivity to clean out and around her children’s ears with a handkerchief dampened with spit.
    Their two children are younger than us. The only reason we countenance them at all is because of their glowing ears.
    There are only four guests to dinner tonight, plus my parents—which makes six. Father calculates six portions to a chicken. Hence the single giblet.
    Meanwhile Father has launched his emergency-measures joke.
    A British soldier and a turbaned native find themselves sharing a compartment. They are traveling by the Khyber Mail to Peshawar. The Indian lifts a bottle of Scotch to his mouth frequently. He does not offer any to the soldier. When the Indian leaves the compartment for a moment the soldier steals a hasty draught from the bottle.
    Again the Indian goes out, and the tommy sneaks another swig.

    They get to talking. The soldier confides he took a draw or two from the Indian’s bottle of Scotch. “Since you didn’t offer it to me, old chap, I helped myself!” he says companionably.
    The native is aghast.
    â€œBut that is my urine in the bottle!” he exclaims. “My hakim prescribed it as a cure for syphilis... ”
    Poor soldier.
    Father and Mother hoot with laughter. Their Sikh guest is in guffaws. And twice, unable to constrain his appreciation, Mr. Singh inserts two fingers in his mouth and emits piercing whistles. His American wife, I think, titters.
    I cannot see them but I doubt if the Rogers manage even a smile. All I see—and barely escape—is a vicious little kick the Inspector General of Police gives the beam. His boots, smelling faintly of horse dung and strongly of shoe polish, keep stabbing the wood.
    Father adds a postscript: “You know—I learned the other day—there was no syphilis in India until the British came... ”
    â€œYou won’t be able to blame everything on us for long, old chap,” says Inspector General Rogers. “That old bugger, Gandhi, is up to his old bag of tricks.”
    â€œWe will have Swaraj ! ” declaims Mr. Singh in deafening belligerence. As if the Englishman, instead of hinting at the premature departure of the British, has just denied him Home Rule.
    â€œYou think you’ll be up to it, old chap?” says Mr. Rogers snidely.
    â€œWhy not?” shouts Mr. Singh as if he is arguing with the Inspector of Police across a hockey field. “I am up to ruling you and your Empire! You recruit all our Sikh soldiers into your World War Number Two and we win the war for you! Whyfore then you think we cannot do Home Rule?”
    Mr.