Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Page B

sacred to Hindu women because it is thought that offerings at this shrine will cure childlessness. But it is sacred to them for only one day a year. The reason why is open to various interpretations. Some believe that a childless woman had been driven away from her husband’s home so that he could marry again. On the day of this second wedding of his she came to hide her shame and grief in Baba Firdaus’ grove. Here she had a vision that within nine months of this date she would bear a child; and so it happened. The day of the festival is called Pati ki Shadi, or the Husband’s Wedding Day. But there are, as I say, various other interpretations, all of them widely differing from and indeed contradicting each other.
    Yesterday was the Husband’s Wedding Day and I accompanied Inder Lal’s mother and her friends to the place of pilgrimage. We went on a bus crammed with women bound for the same destination. Most of them were elderly, and obviously the object of their pilgrimage was, like ours, to have a pleasant outing. Everyone had brought a lot of food which was shared out with many jokes. Some of them had brought barren daughters-in-law, but these remained silent and in the background. Ritu, who had enough children, was left at home.
    I have been wanting for some time to see Baba Firdaus’ grove, but I didn’t get to see much of it yesterday. It was not at all as I had imagined the Nawab’s favourite picnic spot! There was a merry little fair going on with rickety roundabouts and a wooden wheel turning round and rows of barrows selling fly-specked food. Devotional songs blared from a loudspeaker attached to a tree. I couldn’t even see Baba Firdaus’ shrine because there was a tight mass of people wedged in front of it all trying to get near it. We too joinedthem and pushed in the same direction. By the time we got there, perspiring and struggling within the crowd, it was impossible to have a thought in one’s head except to join in whatever was going on. It never became clear to me what this was. There was a priest sitting there receiving offerings. Some of the women – old ones, so they couldn’t be invoking the particular blessing of the place – became very devout and shouted out the name of God as if in pain and some of them tried to prostrate themselves though this was difficult on account of there being no room. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do but, in any case, just to have got there seemed to be enough.
    Our little party found a place under a tree where we all sat in a circle and ate and drank as we had been doing steadily since leaving home. One of the old ladies had a story to tell of a young woman who had been advised an operation on her fallopian tubes but had instead been brought here by her mother-in-law after which conception took place. (Actually, the story ended badly – the woman’s husband had had a spell put on him by another woman and this made him drive his wife and her new-born child out of the house). There were more stories, and I liked listening to them, just as I liked sitting here with my friends in the middle of this festive scene. I felt part of it all – absorbed as I had been absorbed by the worshipping crowd packed into the shrine.
    My friends turned to me: “What about you? What did you pray for?” They teased me and laughed. I said they had brought me to the wrong shrine – first they should have taken me to one where not babies but a husband was to be got. More laughter – but really they were being serious (it was a very serious subject), and perhaps I too had thoughts other than usual.
    1923
    The Husband’s Wedding Day was always a very difficult time for Major Minnies. Since Baba Firdaus’ shrine lay within the Nawab’s state, there was not much that Major Minnies could do except advise. This he did, more and more as the day drew near, nor was he put off by the Nawab laughing at him