On Munni's previous visit to Hyderabad, the memory was brought on by the sight of schoolgirls with pale blue nylon ribbons in their hair. On this visit, it was the scent of attar that came to her, delicate and earthy, distinct from the metal-tinged smells of the second-class railway compartment. It was a childish longing, but Munni had always wondered if Shazia had returned to Hyderabad to look for her.
The year Shazia had come to live with them, Munni had just turned ten. Munni’s days usually began with the sound of her grandmother's clove-tinged laments echoing through the rooms of the ancestral house.
‘I thought I would spend my last days in prayer but look at my fate! All my time goes in bringing up this motherless child!’
‘Does anyone care? No! They all take advantage of me!’
‘You're asking for a raise within six months of the last one? Money grows on trees, or what? Go pluck it then, instead of laying your bundle of woes at my feet.‘
The last vestiges of dreamy sleep would be shaken out of Munni and she was readied for school in a flurry of two-mug baths, yesterday's uniform, hastily made plaits and a boiled egg breakfast eaten en route to school in the rickshaw.
School had its unique blend of smells – some chalk, a little shoe polish, the class teacher's overpowering jasmine perfume and the noon-time base note of curd-rice fermenting in steel lunch boxes. But it was all drowned out by the pungent odour of incomplete homework that hung like a viscous cloud from the rafters. For years after, whenever Munni caught a whiff of one of these smells, she would remember the entire array.
Munni fidgeted through History, doodled during Science, and usually stood outside the class during Maths, punished for not doing her homework. But she also breezed through English, Hindi and Geography, just to get to sports practice in the afternoon. And then it was back home to games of hide-and-seek with the children who lived next door, before it was time for barely-remembered homework, revisions for class tests, broken pencil points, and the hypnotic motion of sharpening them.
The sameness of the routine was relieved somewhat by Sundays, when Munni would daydream through the day, lying on the unusually large four-poster bed in her little room, and having conversations with herself from an imagined future. Or playing games which required four players in the real world but only one in her make-believe one. And then, all too soon, a new week would begin.
Munni complained to her father bitterly about school. Her father, who smelled of rubber tyres and travelled often on work, brushed off her litany of grievances with an indulgent smile, only insisting that she do well in her studies and obey her grandmother.
Every weekday, Munni sulked, looking forward to the next Sunday, the next school vacation and that capricious ally of every school-going child – rain. Her most ardent wish was for a downpour so heavy that the school would be closed, ideally, forever. But the clouds ignored her.
And then, one evening in June, there was the unmistakable promise of rain – the aroma of wet earth. Munni ran around the house, looking out of different windows hoping to catch sight of the first showers, and predicting blithely to the servant and the cook, ‘Just wait and see – it will rain, and rain, and rain!’
‘Foolish child!’ admonished Grandmother, ‘If you can smell it, it will not rain.’
‘No, Grandmother! It will rain! God-promise!’, Munni said, pinching her throat solemnly.
‘I am your Dadi, not Grandmother! You think you're some 'Inglish Mem'? And what is this 'God-promise'? The things she learns in that Inglish school! ‘
And sure enough, as Dadi had predicted, it didn't rain that day.
But the next morning, the earth heaved a sigh of relief when the south-west monsoon eventually descended on the city. This time, the smell of wet earth was accompanied by an insistent tapping on the windowpanes that woke Munni up. When she opened a window, the monsoon blew water in her face like a mischievous playmate. It was finally here! Oh, how wrong her Grandmother was! And there would surely be no school today!
Munni skipped and swooped through the house, looking for her grandmother, whom she found in the kitchen with an unfamiliar woman. Suddenly feeling shy, Munni observed the stranger surreptitiously. Dadi called her over, and told her that Shazia was her cousin, and would be staying with them for a while. Munni had wondered, but was afraid to ask, how Shazia could be her cousin when she looked like a grown woman. And how long was she going to stay? Would she have to share her room forever and ever and ever?
When Shazia moved into Munni's room, some of her mysterious fragrance too moved in with her. It seemed to have permanently perfumed Shazia's skin and had even seeped into her clothes. It seemed familiar, yet new to Munni, but she was too tongue-tied to ask Shazia about it.
Shazia deftly took charge of Munni's routines. Munni's plaits were now bound by a hidden black rubber band under the pale blue nylon ribbon and held tight without unravelling until she returned home from school. Munni polished her shoes the night before and was dispatched to school in a freshly washed, neatly ironed school uniform every day. Shazia taught her little tricks to memorise her lessons, and in the half-yearly exams, Munni's grades showed improvement. Soon, Munni began to lose some of her shyness. It was Shazia's tickling that awoke Munni in the mornings, flailing, squirming and giggling helplessly. And when sleep finally caught up with Munni at night, it was in the comforting circle of Shazia’s fragrant arms.
Occasionally, Shazia would have hushed conversations with Dadi with the latter growling some variant of ‘Why are you still married to that oaf!?’. When Shazia returned from the stationery shop that doubled as a telephone booth from where she would sometimes call home, she had red-rimmed eyes and a bad cold. But she would soon slip into a series of chores that she would emerge from later, back to her usual self.
One Sunday, when Shazia was in the kitchen helping Dadi prepare lunch, Munni lazed on the four-poster, thinking up answers in every letter of the alphabet for Name-Place-Animal-Thing. The game was easy, she could exclude tough letters like Q, so she quickly tired of playing it. She spotted Shazia's pink dupatta on the bedpost, and picked it up, waving it about, admiring the billowing shapes it made. She bundled it into a tight coil in her hands and threw it up in the air, watching the pink cloud descend over her, softly caressing her face. She then tucked in one end of the dupatta at her waist, and tried to drape it like a saree, the way she remembered her English teacher wearing it.
Standing on the cot, she could now see all the mystical objects that Shazia had placed on the chest of drawers. Munni reached forward to pick up two yellow lac bangles and slipped them on her wrists. She grasped Shazia's talcum powder tin, and opened its lid. The white powder that she sprinkled on her palm felt very soft and she patted it on her face. But this was not that smell, not Shazia's fragrance.
Munni spotted a dark-hued glass vial whose etchings glinted in the mid-morning light. It was too far back on the chest of drawers, but Munni was sure she could reach it. She leaned over the footboard of the cot, stretched her toes a little more, grasped the edge of the chest of drawers with one hand, and reached for the bottle with the other. She had barely touched it, when the sharp end of a stray hairpin dug into her forearm. Her hand jerked in reflex, knocking the bottle to its side. It rolled off the edge, and crashed to the floor, soon filling the room with the reek of spilt perfume.
Dadi reached the room first. She looked angry, staring disapprovingly at Munni and at the bottle that lay shattered on the floor. Munni had been forbidden from touching Shazia's things and now she had gone and broken her bottle of perfume. Would Dadi punish her? Would Shazia stop talking to her, playing games with her? Munni felt her throat ache and her face felt very hot. Her nose twitched and her eyes began to well up.
Shazia stepped into the room, took one look at the tear-streaked, talcum-powdered face, the too-large bangles and the clumsy dupatta-saree, and burst out laughing. ‘My Munni wants to become a big girl, haan? How can I lift you like this and swing you around like this if you grow up so quickly?’ She swept the relieved Munni into her arms and placed many little kisses on her face. Dadi left the room muttering under her breath.
Shazia sat Munni down on the cot. She cleared the broken shards on the floor and mopped up the spilt perfume with a newspaper. She pulled out her steel trunk from under the cot and showed Munni a bottle like the broken one. Shazia undid the stopper, dabbed a little on her own wrist and invoked her fragrance into the little room. It was a special type of essence, said Shazia. It captured the scent that arose from the earth just before the rains. Mitti Attar.
So, that was the secret! Shazia's perfume was made of the smell of rain! Munni hugged her and danced all around her. She stretched her wrist out to be dabbed with the essence and spent all day walking around the house, waving her dupatta in the air, and smelling the fragrance on her wrist often.
And then, a day arrived when Munni was awakened not by Shazia's tickles, but by Dadi's rough prodding. When Munni asked her where Shazia was, Dadi seemed to hesitate. She then told her that Shazia had left for Lahore, a place that was far, far away. When asked when Shazia would be back, Dadi had only said that she didn't know. Munni burst into tears. Forever had arrived too soon.
Shazia would no longer be waiting for her at the gates when school ended. There was nobody telling her that if she could set her mind to solving puzzles and games, she could set her mind to doing anything, even becoming a doctor. Together, they had made many plans for when Munni became a big girl – they would travel the world, eat all the cassata slice ice cream they wanted, and watch late night shows in movie theatres. Without Shazia, these plans lost their allure. The house too fell silent, as though all its sounds – the laughter, the word-games, even Dadi's morning laments from before Shazia's time – had been bundled up with Shazia's belongings in her metal trunk, and taken away to distant Lahore. Overnight, Munni became motherless again, but this time, she felt the void.
For a long time after, when Munni tossed in bed at night, clutching a pillow to bury her face into, Dadi dabbed on Munni's wrist, a tinge of the attar that Shazia had left behind, and patted her until she fell asleep. But without Shazia, the attar was bereft of its essence. It was just scented water.
Munni tucked her feet under her on the seat, waiting for the ticket collector. As a child, her sadness had turned into anger that Shazia could forget them, her, so easily. She had neither written letters, nor called on the phone. And there was no way Shazia would possibly know that Munni and her father had eventually moved to Delhi. Still smelling the fragrance in the second class compartment, Munni wondered if she had left some stone unturned in trying to find Shazia.
At the other end of the railway compartment, Shazia wiped her moist eyes with the end of her dupatta, trying not to draw the attention of her fellow passengers. Fifteen years ago, she was a young woman from a respectable family abandoned by her husband, with no means of sustenance. She was the poor relative, appealing to the elderly members of her extended family for benefaction. In exchange for food and stay, she was willing to travel to any relative’s house to chip in with helping an elderly family member, or take charge of the children. Among all the children who were her wards, she had been especially fond of Munni. Dadi had been sympathetic to her situation and had said she could live there for as long as she wanted, even forever. But much to Dadi’s consternation, Shazia left Hyderabad in a hurry. Her estranged husband had sent word from Lahore, insisting that she should no longer shame him by living on the handouts of her extended family. Once under his roof, he had forbidden her from keeping any contact with her side of the family.
And now, with him having passed away, she was on her own again. This time, she was neither the abandoned woman, nor the poor relative. While she had painstakingly pieced together details of the families on whose generosity, she had lived that year, the person she most yearned to meet was Munni. Little was known in the old neighbourhood about Yousuf Bhai or Munni apart from the fact that they had moved to Delhi. They had lost the ancestral house in litigation and in its place, there now stood a shop selling crowbars, spades, shovels and all manner of hardware.
Shazia closed her eyes, exhaled, and settled into her seat. How was she ever going to find little Munni? And if she did find her, what would she say? Would the girl remember her after all these years? Or would she merely regard her as a relative who stayed with them for a brief while? As a young woman born in a more liberal age, would Munni understand her reasons for leaving? Maybe it was best not to worry about that just yet. First, she would find Munni.
As the Nizamuddin Express chugged out of the Hyderabad Nampally Station, the south-west monsoon descended on the city. The aroma of wet earth was accompanied by an insistent tapping on the windows of the train.
*
Saritha Rao Rayachoti’s short stories have been published in literary magazines like Out of Print, Papercuts and the Joao Roque Literary Journal, and in anthologies like Urban Shots: Crossroads, The City of Gods and The Best Asian Short Stories 2017. Her story, ‘Marking Time’, was recently shortlisted for the H G Wells Short Story Competition 2019 and published in the anthology, Time. Saritha is also an independent writer for Indian and international publications.