Mona's school ground story
Answers
Explanation:
Ifirst met Mona at a birthday party in a graveyard. That proximity of birth and death has stayed with us through the many years of our friendship. The back wall of her home abutted that of the morgue of a local hospital and Mona would often say to unsuspecting visitors – knowing full well the possible impact of her words – ‘I have the dead behind me and the dead beneath me.’ Then she might point to the graves on top of which people had built houses and add: ‘It’s a good way to live.’
At the time of that first meeting, I was looking for unusual stories about the Partition of India for a book I was researching. Friends suggested I talk to Mona and offered to take me to meet her. More than a decade has now passed since we met and got to know each other and, looking back, I sometimes wonder what either of us wanted from this unlikely friendship which crossed the barriers of class and gender in curious ways. I’m not sure I am any closer to understanding what, if anything, we’ve gained.
It was the 26th of January in Delhi, a crisp, clear, spicy-radish-and-tomatoes-in-the-sun winter morning that makes you glad to be alive. On this date, some fifty years ago, India had become a republic. Mona had chosen the anniversary to celebrate the birthday of her adopted daughter Ayesha; it pleased her that Ayesha had come into her arms precisely on the 26th of January. She would be free, like India.
The route to the graveyard, the walls of its compound, the pillars at its gate, were plastered with posters inviting all and sundry to the party; it was certainly the most unusual invitation I’d ever seen. Beside a somewhat makeshift, unfinished structure stood a wall about five feet high, and behind it men and women cooked food in large vats. Pakodas were being fried, their delicious aroma wafting out along the clear morning air, vying with the mouth-watering smell of meat curry and hot, oven-baked rotis. At one end of the compound, next to a cluster of graves, two people were busy chopping bananas, guavas and oranges into a spicy fruit chaat. Mona, large and imposing, hennaed and cropped hair spiking every which way, teeth stained with paan, her dark skin catching the winter sun, walked among her guests, offering food to one, a cold drink to another. But something was amiss. She didn’t seem dressed for a party; her clothes were rumpled and somewhat grimy, her hair dishevelled. She looked distracted and unhappy – and there was no sign of her child.
It turned out that Ayesha hadn’t come to her own birthday party because a few days earlier – or possibly it was some weeks – she’d been abducted. Or so Mona said. ‘Abducted’ is perhaps an odd word to describe what had happened to Ayesha, but she had indeed been taken away, by her adoptive ‘grandmother’, Chaman, and ‘mother’, Nargis, who – along with Mona – had formed themselves into a family for the child. Mona was devastated. She’d known of Ayesha’s ‘abduction’ before she’d planned the party – after all, they had all lived together. But she’d gone ahead anyway, in the hope that making the party a public event would shame Ayesha’s grandmother and mother into returning the girl to Mona’s care. This didn’t happen, but all the guests arrived nonetheless, and Mona was torn between her duties as a hostess and her concern over Ayesha’s non-appearance. At some point Mona lay down in front of a small storeroom, defeated, but still insisting that Ayesha would come. ‘I know she will,’ she said. ‘They’re sure to bring her, it’s her birthday.’ But it was clear that her heart wasn’t in it.
My friends and I stayed on at the party for a while, although I don’t think I realized then exactly how broken Mona was by her daughter’s absence. I was fascinated by what I saw around me. Mehendiyan, the large, bustling compound in the heart of Delhi, held