Jeremy Frost
was interrupted only by one heavy wood door and, a little further
down, a narrow alley, easily missed, that provided a more discreet,
less formal entryway to the inhabitants and their familiars. Rasheed
pounded the door with its heavy iron knocker and after what seemed
like an eternity, a young man whom I recognized (from photos I had
seen) as Zafar’s younger brother appeared and let us into a little
drawing room that was separated from the courtyard by a curtain.
This was as far as our guide could come. He declined the offer of a
cup of tea, and after accepting a token glass of water, took his leave.
Once the street door was closed and bolted we were ushered into the
inner sanctum.
Later I would learn that the room we had first entered, furnished
with two sofas, a coffee table and a shelf with sports trophies, was
reserved for “outsiders” or formal visitors, in contrast with the rest of
the sprawling house and courtyard, which was the private domain of
the extended family. Zafar’s parents lived there with their children,
some of them married, some already parents themselves. It differed
from the usual Indian “joint family” arrangement in that not only did
the married sons share the compound, but so did the two elder
daughters with their husbands and kids. Every nuclear family unit, as
well as the unmarried sons, each had their own rooms. Mary and I
were put up in Zafar’s. The kitchen, bathroom and privies were
shared, as was the airy daalaan, a cross between a screened porch
and a family room.
The courtyard, or aangan, was where, weather allowing, most of
the day’s activities unfolded: early-morning and late-afternoon tea;
newspaper reading; visits by assorted relatives; children’s games and
grownups’ gossip; the washing and drying of clothes; the tending of
fruit trees (guava, pomegranate), potted plants, and fancy pet pigeons
housed in a corner aviary. An hour or two before lunch, one or two
ladies of the house would sit on a takht [wooden platform] in the
courtyard with large trays of rice and lentils, which they would
patiently move, a few grains at a time, from one side of the tray to
the other, eliminating tiny pebbles and other impurities as they went.
They explained to us that the rice and pulses had come from the
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