a division between Hindu and Muslim, from the early days of the Muslim League to the recent sudden rise of the Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP, in Delhi that communal chasm is still far less marked than the gap separating the Old Delhi-wallah from the Punjabi immigrant.
Dusshera is the Hindu feast celebrating the victory of Lord Ram over the demon Ravanna; the feast also marks the incipient victory of the cool season over summer’s heat.
According to the legend, Ravanna kidnapped Sita, Ram’s bride, and carried her off to Lanka, his island fortress. There he tried a number of strategies to enrol her into his splendid harem. But with the help of Hanuman, the Monkey God, Ram leaped across the straits to Lanka, rescued Sita, and after an epic struggle lopped off all ten of the demon’s heads.
For the last two weeks of September, in the Delhi parks and maidans, huge wickerwork effigies of Ravanna and his two monstrous brothers, Meghnath and Kumbhakaran, were being erected: workmen clung like sparrows to rickety bamboo scaffolding, busily hammering noses and ears into place. On the feast day, amid a flurry of celebrations, all the effigies were to be burned.
The day of Dusshera—hot, dusty and humid—burned out into a fine warm evening. A Delhi journalist friend had invited Olivia and me to celebrate the festival with him in South Extension. Together we walked to a park near his house. Ravanna was a giant corn dolly 120 feet high, dressed in bright pink pyjamas. He was held upright by six straining guy-ropes. In some of the big gardens in Old Delhi whole circles of hell had been erected—ten or eleven demons, Ravanna’s whole family, all lined up in menacing rows, black moustaches curled—but our friend was very proud of his single pink devil, and there was no denying that he was a very fine demon indeed.
Beside Ravanna’s ankles a marquee had been erected, and in it a band of Goan boys were playing songs from recent Hindi movies. We took a seat and listened to a number called ‘Ding Dong’—apparently a great hit a few months before. A plump man in a dhoti passed a collection plate around.
Then, to the great excitement of the two hundred children present, the sun set and the pyrotechnics began. Some Roman candles spluttered between Ravanna’s legs. A volley of rockets arched above his shoulders. With a small pirouette, the plump man in the dhoti took a burning torch and touched both Ravanna’s feet. A slow blue flame licked up his legs and hovered around his waist. Suddenly his pink pyjama top took light; and in a trice the whole effigy was in flames. We could feel the heat like a furnace in our faces. Then a canister of Chinese crackers secreted in Ravanna’s chest blew up with a deafening roar. The crowds cheered; and a full moon rose over the demon’s smouldering carcass.
That October was a season of strange and fiery sunsets: great twilight infernos blazing in the heavens. Sometimes, just as the sun was going down, the evening fumes would mingle with the dung fires of the jhuggi-dwellers to form a perfectly straight sheet of mist along Lodhi Road. Beyond, the thick and dusty air would turn weird, unnatural colours in the gloaming: vivid, luminous mauves; dark, dingy crimsons; deep, bloody reds. Once I saw the great onion dome of Safdarjang’s Tomb illuminated by a beam from the doomed sun. The light remained constant for less than a minute, but it picked out the great Mughal tomb with an unearthly brightness, spot-lit against an abattoir sky.
Compared with the months before the temperature was suddenly quite bearable. Up in the high Himalayas the first snows had begun to fall and cool winds were blowing down, quenching the fires of the plains. Though it was still very warm, the bottled-up irritations, suppressed during the previous six months of white heat, came bubbling out in a burst of righteous indignation. Delhi suddenly blossomed with little encampments: every traffic island had someone fasting to death; every day a new pressure group would march on Parliament. You could see them trotting along in a great crocodile, banners held aloft, or else sitting sweating under canopies in Rajpath: there were the teachers and the Tibetans, the blood donors and the dog owners; once, to Balvinder Singh’s delight, there was even a delegation of prostitutes from G.B. Road. All the sit-ins, walk-outs and protest marches were remarkably good-humoured; even the hunger strikers seemed strangely to be enjoying themselves.
It was now cool enough for Olivia to go out painting in the mornings. Every day she would get up at eight and disappear with her brushes and her watercolours. She had given up her place at art school to come out to Delhi and she was determined to make the most of the opportunity. For the rest of the cold season she toured Old Delhi’s kuchas and mohallas sketching the people, the buildings and the ruins. Some days she would not return until dusk.
The new season also brought about changes downstairs in the Puri household. From the middle of October, Mr Puri embarked on his winter routine of taking a morning walk around the square below the house. Though the square was only half the size of a football pitch, getting Mr Puri around it was quite an operation, and a new servant was contracted to oversee the business of his daily perambulation. He was a tiny Nepali boy, clearly not a day older than eight. I said as much to Mrs Puri.
‘He is nineteen,’ she replied.
‘But he is only three and a half feet tall.’
‘He is Nepali,’ said Mrs Puri. ‘Nepali people are small.’
‘But he has no beard. His voice hasn’t broken. He should be at primary school.’
Mrs Puri considered this. ‘They have bad food in Nepal,’ she explained. She wobbled her head: ‘In a year, when he has eaten our nutritious dal and rice, he will double in size. Then he will have a moustache and maybe a beard also.’
Every day the boy, Nickoo, performed the tricky task of winding a new white turban around Mr Puri’s head and winching the cantankerous old man down the stairs. He then had to push Mr Puri around the square—the old man all the time raving or propositioning passers-by—before pushing him back up again. There was no doubt, however, that Mr Puri clearly enjoyed the whole thing enormously. His spirits rose in anticipation of his daily treat, and if crossed while on tour he could be positively frisky.
‘Good morning, Mr Puri,’ Olivia once ventured on meeting him and Nickoo half-way around the square.
‘My darling, my sweetheart,’ replied Mr Puri, somewhat unexpectedly. ‘Be my wife.’
‘You’ve picked the wrong girl, Mr Puri,’ replied Olivia, marching off, brushes in hand.
This put-down, like the others before it, failed to put Mr Puri off the scent, although he did initiate enquiries, through Nickoo, as to whether Olivia and I really were married. In the meantime he continued to shoot around the flat on his zimmer, chasing Olivia if ever she ventured downstairs to borrow some milk. Finally he got caught.
One day Olivia was standing in the doorway chatting to Mrs Puri when Mr Puri appeared at the bottom of the stairs. He had just returned from his morning walk and did not realize his wife was the other side of the door.
‘My sweetheart: are you damsel or madam?’ he asked.
Olivia turned round to see Mr Puri advancing towards her.
‘This man,’ he said pointing to Nickoo, ‘says you are madam. I say you are damsel.’
Mrs Puri flung open the door and fired a burst of rapid-shot Punjabi at her husband. Then she turned to Olivia.
‘He means you are married now so you are "madam",’ she said, glowering at her husband, ‘while before you were "damsel".’
‘Are you damsel or madam?’ repeated Mr Puri, undaunted, grabbing hold of Nickoo and propelling himself upwards towards Olivia.
Olivia
