|
|
It’s thus that under the roof of
Mrs Humez I became an admiring privy to the American spirit in
action. A daughter of the New England Pilgrim Fathers had made
my Harvard stay an expanding metaphor for the energies that have
sustained the American civilisation — its tenderness for those
exiled from far shores, even when it put them to the wheel to
earn their bread as an act of God. Henry James, the novelist
whose complex and exciting work had, in the first instance,
brought me to Harvard talks of American women as those
"frail vessels," which had carried the spirit of
America triumphantly in their sails to create a new
"Eden". Mrs Humez, it appeared, had the genes of that
generation — a true daughter of the soil rich in fruit and
flower, in sights and sounds.
Thus, that year
at Harvard became an arbour for me to work out my own vision of
life, societies and civilisations. And though I watched TV in
the evenings by her side (the serial, based on John Galsworthy’s
novel, The Forsyte Saga, being a hot favourite then). It
was really in the kitchen and in the dining-room where my ‘education’
started. I learnt to admire Mrs Humez’s kitchen ‘ethics’,
her sense of economy and of sharing. The music of water from the
tap, the ‘dance’ of gestures, the sounds of sizzling steaks,
amongst other things, completed this beautiful little tableau.
Let me sketch
briefly a typical scene — Mrs Humez, bespectacled, bending
over the round mahogany dining-table, and disposing of bills,
letters and papers. A lowered light from the ceiling covered her
crown of mouse-gray hair, and her thoughtful spirit luminously
bright reminded me of a Rembrandt portrait. There was a hint of
saintliness about her. I think the eternal American girl in her
lived in rich measure. And when sometimes I called her from my
cabin in the Houghton Library, her voice on the telephone had
the softness of silver bells, as it were. No wonder, she had
married a musician, and kept saying prayers to his memory in her
heart.
I had had many
a surprise in that home, but one that really amused me was the
discovery one evening that the patch-work silken quilt I was
using to cover my cold bones at night was a piece of historical
interest. Imagine, Mrs Humez as a babe in that coverlet! Yes,
born in that very house, her mother had woven this quilt for the
new-born. I felt quite queer at times, musing over the point...
Mrs Humez, too,
had like other mortals, suffered, grieved and mourned, had seen
the breaking of her daughters’ marriages, but her suffering
had mellowed into a state of mind, and she would not permit
herself the luxury of pity. It was something to be lived with;
suffering had not to be worn on the sleeve. It strengthened the
screws of the spirit, and enable one to face "the assaults
of reality", to use a Jamesian phrase.
I must not
forget to mention that Mrs Humez who had never gone beyond high
school had a passion for the English language, a visible concern
for its health and future in that Yankee land. She had, toiling
over her books and her dear well-bound Webster, acquired a
passion for precision, economy and beauty in language. A
solecism or an awkward phrase amounted to a faux pas in
her system of values. No Harvard don, no Orwell, agonised more
over the moral health of the Queen’s English than this obscure
little flame burning fiercely in that small university town,
Cambridge.
My last
striking memory of Mrs Humez takes me back to an evening when we
stood together amidst a riot of new lilacs in Arnold Arboretum
near the suburb of Forest Hills. I clicked my camera and we were
deeply rewarded as we stood watching the sunset. The sheer
ceremoniousness of it all touched me deeply.
When, finally,
it was time to leave and return home to India, I touched Mrs
Humez’s feet, even as I was to touch my mother’s at Dehra
Dun later that month. It was a quiet, beautiful parting, and she
asked me to keep in touch with my "American home", as
she put it. During the next two years, we exchanged some letters
and yearly greetings till one Christmas card remained
unacknowledged. I knew instinctively she was no more, and was
already gathered with the New England grasses. She had as her
son wrote to me, "passed on", cremated, wrapped in an
Indian shawl. To quote the last line of David’s letter,
"I like to think that she would be welcomed at the gates of
Paradise by the One who is clothed in the dress of all
peoples."
It may perhaps be appropriate
to end this "portrait of a lady" on a Jamesian note.
In this story called Altar of the Dead, Henry James
memorialises the mystery of the figures who have somehow moved
the imagination and gone, leaving behind an unmistakable
signature of the spirit. I love to think of Mrs Humez as one
such person, and I would always remain lighting candles in the
transepts of an adoring heart. Now that I brood endlessly over
my own hapless condition, that "Bright Absentee" still
lights up the difficult path ahead of me. Well, if we go by the
doctrine of Karma who knows we may yet meet in the
heavens above, spirits in waiting at the door of the Lord!
|
