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Authors: M.G. Vassanji
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community in India had been torn apart by strife. Various parties had sprung up, with diverging fundamentalist positions, each taking some thread of the complex and sometimes contradictory set of traditional beliefs, hitherto untainted by theologian hands, to some extreme conclusion and claiming to represent the entire community. The bone of contention among these Shia, Sunni, Sufi and Vedantic factions became the funds collected in the small centres and mosques. Faced with this situation, Dhanji Govindji had simply stopped sending the money on to any of the big centres and kept it in trust for the Matamu community. The strife had resulted in murders in Bombay and Zanzibar. And now, it seemed, in Matamu. But why unimportant Matamu, why Dhanji Govindji, no one could say. This was one year after his return from Mozambique in the
Mariamu
.
Mukhi Dhanji Govindji, Sharriffu to the Swahilis, was buried with full honours by the village of Matamu, carried in a procession of males headed by Shamsi, Bhatia and Swahili elders to the grave, grieved for by women ululating along the way.
A few days later, the widow’s daughter started disposing of her husband’s belongings. Ji Bai was entrusted with burning the bloodstained clothes. Which she did, except for the muslin shirt she would keep the rest of her life. And before the widow’s daughter or anyone else could discover them, she took Dhanji Govindji’s three padlocked books from behind a shelf inthe store and hid them with the possessions she had brought from her parents’ home.
Kala. Thank you so much for the copy of Book I (as I have designated it). God make you live a full hundred and one years! Unfortunately, it is rather a disappointment. It looks like a ledger, with entries for debits and credits. A typical entry: 20 rupees to Bhai Rehemtulla Sharif for potatoes! This one, my dear chronicler-brother, is the most
atypical
entry and should interest you: 30 rupees to Ragavji Devraj bai na maté, for the woman! A cut-rate price, I should think. But then of course the slave trade was over. Considering that both you and I are the result of that one purchase, not a bad deal, don’t you think? There are also two pages with only numbers on them, which he was using presumably for rough calculations. It’s a mystery, this need for the padlock. A theory I am working on is that in those days people liked to keep their business dealings secret. Perhaps the old man was afraid some djinn would read them—not as far-fetched as it sounds, why do you think children’s given names were not used? Sona
.
Dear Sona, you and your djinn theory! If you had looked carefully at the two pages with “only numbers” on them, you would have seen that they are not calculations, but entries—anonymous. I am willing to wager anything that they are secret records of community funds, which Dhanji Govindji held in trust, unwilling to send on to Zanzibar. Remember that community accounts have always been kept secret, sometimes with the aid of codes. What you call rough calculations are actually columns of entries—each column for a family, perhaps, each entry for a donation. I wonder where the money went. Your brother Kala
.
Kala
. Touché.
Sona
.
TH SIN OF ONE MAN.
One bullet, they say, lime liliya, throughout Ulaya. The wits of Matamu. Every afternoon they emerge having said their prayer at the public mosque, a pair playing bao outside a house, a line of elders sitting on the stone bench outside the mosque, a group playing cards under a tree, in their immaculate kanzus and caps, sipping coffee or ginger tea, chewing tobacco or counting the tasbih; and discussing siasa: politics. Now it’s the war in Europe that’s on their minds. Close by, in an open room, an elementary Quran-reading class is under way, and the chorus of boys begins, “an-fata-ha-tin in-kisiratin un-zamu-tin …”
One bullet, they repeat, has reverberated throughout the length and breadth of the land where the Mdachi and
Mariamu
.
Mukhi Dhanji Govindji, Sharriffu to the Swahilis, was buried with full honours by the village of Matamu, carried in a procession of males headed by Shamsi, Bhatia and Swahili elders to the grave, grieved for by women ululating along the way.
A few days later, the widow’s daughter started disposing of her husband’s belongings. Ji Bai was entrusted with burning the bloodstained clothes. Which she did, except for the muslin shirt she would keep the rest of her life. And before the widow’s daughter or anyone else could discover them, she took Dhanji Govindji’s three padlocked books from behind a shelf inthe store and hid them with the possessions she had brought from her parents’ home.
Kala. Thank you so much for the copy of Book I (as I have designated it). God make you live a full hundred and one years! Unfortunately, it is rather a disappointment. It looks like a ledger, with entries for debits and credits. A typical entry: 20 rupees to Bhai Rehemtulla Sharif for potatoes! This one, my dear chronicler-brother, is the most
atypical
entry and should interest you: 30 rupees to Ragavji Devraj bai na maté, for the woman! A cut-rate price, I should think. But then of course the slave trade was over. Considering that both you and I are the result of that one purchase, not a bad deal, don’t you think? There are also two pages with only numbers on them, which he was using presumably for rough calculations. It’s a mystery, this need for the padlock. A theory I am working on is that in those days people liked to keep their business dealings secret. Perhaps the old man was afraid some djinn would read them—not as far-fetched as it sounds, why do you think children’s given names were not used? Sona
.
Dear Sona, you and your djinn theory! If you had looked carefully at the two pages with “only numbers” on them, you would have seen that they are not calculations, but entries—anonymous. I am willing to wager anything that they are secret records of community funds, which Dhanji Govindji held in trust, unwilling to send on to Zanzibar. Remember that community accounts have always been kept secret, sometimes with the aid of codes. What you call rough calculations are actually columns of entries—each column for a family, perhaps, each entry for a donation. I wonder where the money went. Your brother Kala
.
Kala
. Touché.
Sona
.
TH SIN OF ONE MAN.
One bullet, they say, lime liliya, throughout Ulaya. The wits of Matamu. Every afternoon they emerge having said their prayer at the public mosque, a pair playing bao outside a house, a line of elders sitting on the stone bench outside the mosque, a group playing cards under a tree, in their immaculate kanzus and caps, sipping coffee or ginger tea, chewing tobacco or counting the tasbih; and discussing siasa: politics. Now it’s the war in Europe that’s on their minds. Close by, in an open room, an elementary Quran-reading class is under way, and the chorus of boys begins, “an-fata-ha-tin in-kisiratin un-zamu-tin …”
One bullet, they repeat, has reverberated throughout the length and breadth of the land where the Mdachi and
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