The Household

In my early childhood, the house at Hussaini Alam was not at its most  populated.

The household was not too large for the late nineteen sixties.  It consisted of three men (including one in absentia), eight women — although  my sister and I, still at primary school, could hardly be classified as  ‘women’ — two dogs, one cat, a parrot, four ducks, one drake, 89 lovebirds,  two hens, one rooster, a dozen red fish, and half the children of the neighbourhood  who spent all their waking hours in this virtual zoo, which was a  matter of great relief to their mothers.

The central character in my life and the lives of all who had lived there  over the last hundred and eighty years, was the House itself; an old­manhouse  as houses go. It had lived its long, dramatic life, in a locality dating  from the 1600s (perhaps earlier), abounding in legends of princes and  mystics and the power of natural elements — Hussaini Alam. The trajectory  of its life shaped the trajectories of all the lives it touched. It did not  cease to exist even after it was demolished. Its larger than life presence,  brooding yet funny, still permeates my dreams. Strangely, my dreams are  often situated in it to this day. I once resided in it, now it resides in me. I  could not belong to any other house.

The head of the house was Syed Aminul Hussain, my maternal grandfather,  a silent, dignified dictator, albeit a benevolent one. Having practiced  law for fifty­three years only to reluctantly give it up due to failing eye  sight, he was known to outsiders — from the cycle­taxi owner at the corner  of our street, to the Imaam of Macca Masjid, a kilometre and a half away —  as Vakil Saab. The entire household called him Sarkar. Only Mummy, the  eternal rebel, called him Bawajaan, and so did my sister and I.  At the apex of the hierarchy pyramid of my extended family, at that  time, was Qamar­un­Nissan Begum, my great­grandmother and  Bawajaan’s mother­in­law. We girls called her Nanima. A full seven years  younger than her own son­in­law, she was a bubbly, giggly, bouncy, moonfaced  (in keeping with her name, ‘moon amongst women’) little lady in her  seventies.

Next in the hierarchy was Meher­un­Nissan (sun amongst women), my  grandmother and Bawajaan’s wife. The engineering genius of the family,  she had a penchant for inventing, repairing and modifying gadgets that  were simple to use and had great utility value. Bitter oreal or imagined, she had a caustic tongue but was always the one who would give of herself most generously. She offered help before you knew you needed it. She was interestingly called ‘Bhabi’ by her foster daughter and her son. Mummy called her Amma. Amma was in her late fifties.

Khalajaan or Khudsia Begum was my mother’s foster­elder­ sister and  my ‘godmother’ or rather, my ‘guardian angel’. Though God had not been  kind to her, she was devoid of any bitterness against those who had effectively  destroyed her for their petty egos. She was the ‘Solomon’ of the  household and had the peculiar gift of carrying on a conversation with any  animal — wild or tame. Her greatest talent however, was in telling those  wonderful fairytales that made me forget reality.

On the sidelines was Mir Rajjab Ali Khan, Khalajaan’s husband and a  man most particular about manners, traditions and the value of every relationship.  A ruined jagirdar, he carried on without one word of complaint  in the direst of circumstances. He was the most handsome old man I  knew. We called him Khalubawa.

Then came Mummy — rebellious, irreverent, progressive, and a com­ mitted communist. It was as though the house held a live ticking bomb  when she was there. She was a writer par excellence. Mummy was mercurial;  our Shiva with a mission to destroy the old and create a new world.  She, of all people carried the cross of a sensitive person. She was our  martyr too. Our own Jesus Christ.

‘Aapa’ or Mariam, my sister, was older to me by two years. She had zero  tolerance for me. Fisticuffs were an everyday occurrence much to the chagrin  of all the members of the household including the dogs, who started  to howl every time our voices became high­pitched. At  the adjectives used for her were sober, serious, well behaved, well mannered  and of course, beautiful. She was Miss Universe stuff, although no  such thing may have existed then. She had everything a parent would like  to see in a child, though ‘why and wherefore’ of that very beauty causing  her ruin, is still a matter of much debate. She was our ‘Nefertiti’. She had  the same ancient profile.

Last of all, and a little above the dogs, Bobo and Muchico, the baby of  the family was none other than me, Ayman. Unfriendly, bad­tempered and  quick to retaliate, I was a veritable enfant terrible. Reading was my single  passion. I was friendless. Who needed friends when you were the ‘Princess’  of the head of the household? I was also the ugly duckling of the  house. That I would some day grow into a swan, was something no one  was going to wager upon.

However, there was another member of this household, well above the rest and next only to Bawajaan; a member who had not lived in the house for more than fifteen years now, yet hung like a heavyplace, almost like a ghost. He was omni­present. No man, from Einstein to Shah Rukh Khan, was more admired. He was almost worshipped. There would certainly have been a temple in his name if we had not been Muslims.  This was Mamu or Dr. Hidayat Hussain, the blue­eyed boy who we  saw once every other week, who indeed had the capacity to enter every  nook or cranny of our house in absentia. Mamu was my mother’s brother  or Sarkar’s male heir (to what, I never quite understood). Extremely volatile,  exceptionally decent and generous to a fault, Mamu could hold his  own in any gathering. However, I thought he was but a pale shadow of the  fiery spirit of my mother.

The two maids on whose shoulders the household rested were Hasina  and Qassim Bee. Hasina (meaning the beauty) was a dark, fat, breathless  slave girl Amma had bought as an infant from a starving rustic mother  during one of the many droughts that plagued the Deccan Plateau. I was  told Sarkar was all rage and fury at Amma’s ‘hare­brained’ act. His legal  mind took it as a crime while Amma thought she had given a home to anorphan­to­be.  Hasina was rather lazy. Within a year or two of our coming  to live in the house, she eloped with a fruit vendor and lived unhappily  ever after. She visited us often though, to recount the numerous misfortunes  that befell her and while so doing, she helped Amma in the seasonal  tasks that needed to be done around the house.

Qassim Bee who was called Naiyan Dadi (Naiyan because she was a barber’s  wife, and Dadi because she was elderly) was a healthy, sturdy, robust,  forty something woman, who could do all the work with her left hand  when her right one broke. She had lost her husband to a pretty young  thing quite early in her marriage. She would sing ‘virha’ in her rasping  voice when it rained hard and the big black mole on the side of her nose  trembled. She had a son and several grandchildren but I was her most  loved child. Later, when we could not pay her wages,  working. She would cajole and beg for an apple or some other fruit from  the bandi­wallas, saying she was old and helpless and her children had  abandoned her. The goodies would be retrieved from the complex folds of  her saree later to be fed to me behind Aapa’s back.

Bobo and Muchico (Mummy was the one who came up with such impossible  names) were brown Daschunds. Bobo was a handsome, gloss­ finished,  broad ­browed dog. At sundown, he sat in the middle of the hall and  dozed off. As his head slowly tipped forward, his nose hit the flagstones; he  woke up with a start and chased his unfinished dream right down the steps  and across the courtyard at breakneck speed, crashing into whatever there  was at the other end. Then he forlornly retraced his steps and dozed off  again. This dumb dog would prove to be my only childhood playmate in  that house. He excelled in hide­ and ­seek – I alway pretended to seek and fail, when he could have smelled me out a mile away.

Muchico was the brainy, effervescent one. I suspected she was never in love with Bobo because she snapped at him most times. She had a special place in Bawajaan’s heart. Every morning she stretched her little body to  place her paws on the edge of his bedside table to greet him with melting,  fawning eyes. She cornered most titbits while Bobo made clumsy attempts  at catching them. They were both wonderful at protecting Aapa and me  from Mummy’s wrath. Every time she flew into a rage, they howled so  loudly that it brought Bawajaan out of his room.

Minnu, the cat, was a white, blue­eyed, disdainful ball of fur. Her love  for us was seasonal, igniting only in the winters. She liked to curl up in our  quilt and her running­motor­ purring was a good sedative. She was a real  cat though!    The rest of the household was bird­brained, literally. The drake was particularly  duck­headed. He could draw blood from your ankle if you tried to  get friendly with the ducks. The parrot, Changez, was a maladjusted, malevolent  bird. He had learnt the second half of the poem that Nanima had  mischievously taught him. And he chose to recite these lines when guests,  especially decent, elderly folk came calling.  “Polly wants a bottle of Beer! Polly wants a bottle of bEER, beeR,  BEEEEr!”

That left the guests and the hosts red­faced. Amma had devised a saveface­from­malicious­bird drill. At every knock on the door, the person  closest to the parrot’s cage, picked it up, ran to the storeroom, dumped it  in the dark corner behind the giant earthen silo, shut the door and pretended  to go about her business casually. It worked.    True to their names, the 44 pairs of lovebirds and a pink loner were the  gentlest, most demonstratively affectionate little packets of colourful  feathers. No trouble in that quarter.

This motley collection was enhanced now and then by Aapa’s perverse  choice of temporary pets like the three finned turtle, or the bullfrog whose  ample back she liked to stroke, resulting in wet marks on the floor. Or  even a green chameleon in a glass case with some green twigs thrown in.  She sat rapt, watching the clumsy fellow’s slow­motion progress on the  twig. It got my bile up, but Aapa was all wonderment.

The House

By the time I was born, the Hussaini Alam House was already a ripe old  hundred and seventy years. Only for a third of its life had it been in  my mother’s family. Bawajaan, my grandfather, had acquired it as a status  symbol along with his 1919 Fiat, from the heirs of Nawab Faridun Jah, Nizam  Ali Khan’s favourite son, who, but for his mother’s lineage, could have  been the third Nizam of Hyderabad.

The huge house was part of the Dewdi complex of five havelis. The road  from Golconda to Charminar, on which it stood, was one of the four main  thoroughfares at that time, which divided the city into four quadrants,  each with a designated area of operation. This quarter was for the residences  of the royal family. However, by the time I came into this world,  the royalty had disappeared, the prestige attached to the address had long  been forgotten and it came to be called ‘Old City’, a place where even the  basic amenities of city life were hard to come by. It hadn’t yet turned into  the Muslim ghetto it is today. It still had the old world charm and dignity  associated with the culture of Hyderabad.

The five havelis stood around an oval and had access to the main road  through a giant, red, wooden doorway, all of 30ft high and 15ft wide, designed  for elephants to pass. A dozen African guards were employed to  open and close this door. When my sister and I were children in the late  sixties, this dilapidated symbol of power and security stood wide open,  never to be shut again and has since disappeared in bits and pieces to become  firewood for the residents of nearby bastis. Its foot­and­a­half long  nails and heavy 7ft cross­bars have long since been melted to make grills  for illegal houses.

The haveli that Bawajaan bought, like the other four, faced the central  oval within the complex. But strangely (it did not seem strange then) the  backdoor of our house opened onto the main Hussaini Alam road.

It was a typically Deccani Islamic Palladian architectural building. The  house had two main entrances – one for outsiders, guests, and men, coming  in from the Oval and the other for the relatives, servants, and women,  from the backdoor or the ‘zanana’ door. Old Hyderabad had such houses,  belonging mostly to the gentry. The men’s entrance opened onto the for­ mal garden, to the left of which stood the diwan khana or the drawing room. Only one wall of this room was common with the rest of the house; otherwise it stood all by itself – segregated. The one common wall had a door that led to my grandfather’s private quarters and this door was always kept shut unless used by him. The women’s entrance, at the other end of the house, opened from the street onto a passage leading into a tiny courtyard. The door to the left led to the servants’ quarters and animal pens and stables. The bigger, arched doorway to the right, opened onto the wide, square, central courtyard. This space was the heart and soul of the  house, central to our lives and the bastion of the women.

As you stepped into the main ‘square’, you could see, across the courtyard,  the four steps leading to a raised open hall or daalaan. Its high roof  was supported on twelve massive Ionic stone pillars, standing in three  rows. On both sides of the steps leading to the daalaan, were rectangular  Moroccan tiled cisterns, lined with lilies. A money­plant climbed on the  trellis at the corner of the hall. Its roots trailed in the pool and the leaves grew into giant green and yellow hearts. Mummy had a school of fat red fish that she would call by tapping at the edge of the pool. They would leap to take the tiny balls of dough from her hands. I loved to put my fingers in the water for the fish to nibble at. It tickled me into giggles.