by Omair Ahmad
Thinking furiously, but determined not to show it, Rafiq ignored the glare that Rustam, Ahmed Saeed’s bulldog of a driver, threw his way. It was that glance that cleared his brain and, assuming a jaunty tone that went well with his superstar haircut, he replied, ‘One can also rise in love, Ahmed Saeed sahib, not just fall in it—unless brought down to earth by the honking of a car horn.’
Ahmed Saeed guffawed at the well-turned phrase, and Rafiq, who had been worried that he might be going a little too far with the implied criticism, relaxed and laughed along.
‘Jump in, Majnu,’ Ahmed Saeed said, ‘let me drop you off at your house. We can’t let lovers be run over by careless drivers now, can we?’
As Rafiq moved to jump into the rear of the jeep, Ahmed Saeed said, ‘Not back there, old man, there’s enough space in the front.’
Things changed that evening for Rafiq. What an honour it was to be riding with Ahmed Saeed, in the front seat at that, shoulder to shoulder with the most important man in the mohalla. He could hear the buzz of gossip subside and rise as they passed by tea shop after tea shop, and knew that everybody was watching them. One of Rafiq’s friends had the temerity to wave, and Rafiq’s face crinkled in distaste. He only partially raised a hand to acknowledge the greeting.
‘Who was that?’ Ahmed Saeed wanted to know.
‘Oh, Ahmed Saeed sahib,’ Rafiq said, laughing dismissively, ‘you know how it is these days, everybody thinks they are your equals. That young man is in his third year of engineering and thinks that makes him fit to have conversations with this nacheez who was mad enough to keep at it till he’d done an MA, and a BEd too.’
‘Really?’ Ahmed Saeed sounded a little bewildered. He hadn’t realized that somebody of Rafiq’s class could actually claim to be educated.
‘First class,’ Rafiq said, and then clarified, ‘although they didn’t give it to me in my BEd for a two-mark difference.’
‘They must have realized that you are Muslim,’ Ahmed Saeed said grumpily.
It seemed implausible. The examination papers went to the central examination board, and there were no names on the papers, only identification numbers. But Rafiq nodded along. Everybody knew that Ahmed Saeed had managed to pass the fiendishly difficult civil service exam three times, only to be denied at the interview stage. Three times he had faced a board of examiners armed with the air of a man accustomed to power and privilege, with the knowledge that all that was best in India could be his, and three times he had been denied by the stony faced men. It had been years since those slights, but Ahmed Saeed still brooded on them, assigning many reasons for his failure to break into the privileged club of Indian bureaucracy.
Ahmed Saeed had lapsed into silence, but just before they reached Rafiq’s house, he seemed to come out of his sudden despondency. ‘Come to my house tomorrow. If you’re free, that is.’
Rafiq had a job interview the next day, but this was an invitation to Shabbir Manzil. ‘The British are gone,’ he said, waving a hand, ‘we’re all free men now.’
Ahmed Saeed laughed. ‘Good man,’ he said and squeezed Rafiq’s thigh, a gesture that could only mean that they were now friends.
Rafiq walked into his parents’ house with his chest stuck out, knowing that things were going to change, that they had already changed, that he was a man of promise. He woke up early the next day, so early that he managed to make it for the pre-dawn prayers at the neighbourhood mosque, something he hadn’t done in years. But the sleepy devout who were about so early in the morning were not the ones that Rafiq could speak to about Shabbir Manzil. And of course Ahmed Saeed wasn’t there—even though it was his great-grandfather who had financed the building of the mosque about a hundred years ago. It was well known that Ahmed Saeed woke only after eleven in the morning and wouldn’t see anyone before noon.
‘Rafiq beta,’ the maulvi called out as Rafiq sat at the doorway of the mosque struggling to pull on his shoes. They were just a little small for him, and bit into his ankles if he walked too far in them, but he considered them his lucky pair—and he had polished them lovingly the night before, humming happily to himself, enjoying the smell of the Cherry polish and the deep shine that the leather acquired.
‘As salaam aleikum Maulana sahib,’ Rafiq said, as he finally succeeded with the shoes, ‘how have you been?’
‘Alhamdulillah, Praise be to God,’ the maulvi replied, ‘it’s been ages since I have seen you here.’
Even to Rafiq, with his finely tuned ear for both praise and censure, there was no criticism in those words. Maulana Jalali Qayoom was a kindly man, and it showed on his round face with its curiously Central Asian features.
‘I’m running around trying to get a job, Maulana sahib,’ Rafiq said, and then, looking up at Qayoom sahib, he asked abruptly, ‘Will you pray for me?’
The maulvi reached out and patted Rafiq on the cheek. ‘Always. My prayers are with you children, always.’
And as Rafiq turned to go, he added, ‘Think of marriage as well, beta, once you have the job.’
Rafiq nodded, but although he had been questioned repeatedly about marriage—he was almost thirty and both his brothers had married before they turned twenty-five—that day the maulvi’s quiet words had a deeper impact. Rafiq would think of them later, wondering whether the maulvi had mixed up the prayers, or combined them both as some kind of package deal—a toothbrush free with a tube of toothpaste.
It was a long day for Rafiq, made longer by the unusual edge of anticipation. It had been years, more than a decade, since he had looked forward to an event. Nothing much happened in Moazzamabad; or if it did, none of it mattered to the denizens of Rasoolpur. Of course people still followed cricket matches on their transistor radios, but that was no longer Rafiq’s style.
He cancelled the job interview in the evening. It had been nothing much, a clerical position in the forestry department, and he hadn’t been keen on it anyway. But he didn’t tell his parents. His father was pleasantly surprised by the particularity with which Rafiq ironed his clothes, fussing over the lightest crease, and gave him a little money for the rickshaw so that his shiny shoes wouldn’t scuff. Rafiq almost blurted out the truth then, but he bit down the words. He was convinced that his family would not understand the significance of Shabbir Manzil—how could they, with their limited education and their modest, middle-class background? Now was not the time to enlighten them.
When Rafiq stopped the rickshaw just before Shabbir Manzil he was all set to confront the gathering there, but as he made his way down the long driveway he saw that there was nobody sitting in the courtyard. Was he too early? Had there been a misunderstanding?
His stomach tightened suddenly. What would he tell his father?
Just as he rounded the final bend, Rafiq spotted Rustam polishing the old Buick that had been acquired by the old Shabbir sahib nearly forty years ago, and which was rarely taken out on the broken roads of Moazzamabad.
‘Rustam,’ Rafiq said, ‘Ahmed Saeed sahib had called me.’
It was an unnecessary thing to say; Rustam had been right there, in the jeep with them, last evening, and he had heard the invitation clearly enough.
‘His bhaijaan is here,’ Rustam said sourly, ‘his cousin from Lucknow.’
And then as Rafiq stood, caught unprepared, Rustam added, ‘There’ll be no gathering today.’
The humiliation, and that too at the hands of a servant, brought the blood rising to Rafiq’s face. If a mere driver mocked him like this, what would the others say?
‘Tell him I’m here,’ Rafiq said sharply, his voice slightly screechy.
When Rustam made to protest, Rafiq cut him off: ‘Tell him. Now.’
Rustam looked him up and down lazily, then dropped the rag he was holding on the bonnet of the Buick, and walked into the doorway of the mouldering old house.
As he waited, Rafiq’s anger subsided a little, only to come rushing back when he imagined how the others would laugh at this.
And then su
ddenly came the booming voice of Ahmed Saeed: ‘Arre Rafiq, forgive me, it had completely slipped my mind that you were coming today, but it’s good that you came.’
Rafiq stretched his hand to take Ahmed Saeed’s, careful not to grip it too hard. Ahmed Saeed’s soft, large hand tightened briefly and then fell out of his grip.
‘Have you met Ismat sahib?’ Ahmed Saeed said, gesturing to the tall, cadaverous figure standing next to him.
This time Rafiq’s hand was taken in a firm, bony grip. The tall man’s skin was dry and coarse, and he held Rafiq’s hand for longer than seemed necessary, looking at him searchingly.
‘As salaam aleikum,’ Ismat sahib said finally in a low voice.
’Wa aleikum as salaam,’ Rafiq replied, and Ismat sahib nodded.
‘Come in, come in,’ Ahmed Saeed put a hand on Rafiq’s shoulder, turning him towards the house. Ismat sahib fell in on the other side, flanking Rafiq.
‘I was just telling Ismat bhaijaan about your qualities. We were discussing Sir S.A. Alvi College, since I serve on the managing committee. They’re starting a geography department, and there are a few jobs. It would be a good place for a young man with capabilities such as yours to start out.’
‘I studied history,’ Rafiq clarified.
‘Close enough, close enough,’ Ahmed Saeed said heartily. ‘You have a first-class degree in the arts. That’s what matters, educational excellence. The rest is a matter of detail.’
Rafiq felt his chest swell, and then Ismat sahib’s hand settled on his other shoulder.
‘In fact,’ Ahmed Saeed said, ‘it will also give you the chance to meet Ismat sahib’s sister. Shaista will also be joining the college. She passed first class as well.’
‘With distinction,’ Ismat sahib added softly, as if reminded of something he had tried to forget but failed.
The wedding took place only a few months later.
2
Was it her fault?
It’s hard even to think that, quiet as she was, with such few joys in life, and now so long dead. She loved him dearly, her lal. The moon of her delight, she would call him, and it was true that he was the fulfilment of her dreams, to the extent that she had any dreams left to cherish by the time he was born.
It is hard to think of her in that way, of her hand in his death, her own, uncertain love dragging her to the grave and he following not too long after, like the obedient child he was.
Who could accuse Shaista of anything, other than an inordinate love for her child? And which Indian mother can be accused of anything less?
Her life, as far back as could be recalled, had been an increasingly tightening spiral into deprivation and silence. It had bruised her, perhaps hardened her a little, long before she came to live in our mohalla. She wasn’t born poor, nor did she ever reach the state of destitution that millions around us suffer but few of us will ever understand. It was relentless dispossession, a slide into near penury, that cut off each and every avenue to the wider world. In the little casbah of Tufailganj, barely a dozen kilometres from Lucknow, she had lived minutes away from the capital of Uttar Pradesh, the centre of power for more than a hundred and fifty million souls. A city of graceful architecture and learned gatherings, full of colleges and with a university of its own, Lucknow fled away from her day by day, year after year.
Shaista was barely thirteen when her father passed away, a year after her mother’s death. It was a shock but she was young, and it took only a little while for her to recover, or pretend to, and return to dreams of college, of new clothes and the adoration of young boys from good families that should have been her birthright. Then her brother Ismat, her hero, who was a decade and a half older and almost a second father, came to see her late one morning at her school. It was a convent school, some seventy years old, famed for its discipline and discretion, where people of means sent their daughters to study. In the six years that Shaista had been there, neither her father nor, after him, her brother had ever needed to come to the school. Shaista was surprised but delighted to see her Bhaijaan that morning.
In the empty visiting room, Ismat sat her down and after checking that the door was locked, said, ‘We cannot afford to pay for your school fees.’
‘Bhaijaan,’ she said, bowing her head, uncomprehending.
‘Bitiya,’ he said, using the diminutive that their father had used, ‘Bitiya, I’m sorry.’
It was the weariness in his voice that breached her defences and she started to cry, weeping silently. He waited, wishing she would only understand and not ask him anything. But she did. ‘Can I …’ she began, and then stopped until she could summon up the energy to continue, ‘Can I say goodbye to my friends?’
Ismat rose abruptly, turned and crossed the room. His voice was gruff, and she knew he was hiding tears. ‘There are three months until the summer holidays. We have enough for that, and enough that you can finish your tenth class exams next year as a correspondence student. You can be an external student of the school after that, if you do well. I have spoken to the headmistress and she said it is possible.’
And because she was fourteen, she rushed across the room and hugged him, babbling her thanks and weeping into his sherwani. He patted her gently on the head, and shushed her, saying, ‘Bitiya. Bitiya.’
He could have asked anything in the world of her after that, and she would have agreed. But really, what did she have that she could give him? She couldn’t stop the declining price of sugar cane, or the creeping encroachments by small farmers onto their farmlands and small orchards. She had no power to make the officials at the land registry department less corrupt, or the poor-quality farm equipment more efficient. She could not argue with the banks that refused to give Ismat a loan to bore a well he so desperately needed. She couldn’t advise him about the right insecticide to use on the mango trees, or stop tree rot from killing the crops in the first two seasons alone. And when he had finally figured things out—identified which of the farm hands were thieving scum and which were merely stupid, and which tractor driver would actually do some work and which one would only use the diesel money to drink himself into an incoherent rage, pick a fight and end up in jail with the tractor impounded; when he had learned the names and patterns of the seasons and could tell the different varieties of rice by the smell and feel of the grain alone—by the time her Bhaijaan had acquired all these skills, she could do nothing about the two years of drought that hit eastern Uttar Pradesh, driving better farmers than him into destitution.
All that Shaista could do was study. She couldn’t even run the household, and had to quietly watch as her sister-in-law bought a new set of clothes and earrings and shoes every time she left for her family home, carrying expensive gifts for her brothers and sisters, while Ismat hoarded his clothes, using them sparely, and had his father’s sherwanis altered to fit him.
Shaista understood her fate after the results of her twelfth class exams. She had done well, even as an external student, and the headmistress of her school was kind enough to send a personal letter inviting her to the ceremony where they would honour the three top-scoring students.
She was so excited that she could barely sleep the night before, and got up three times to check the shalwar suit that she had washed and ironed for the occasion. It was almost new. She had worn it only twice before, and had carefully packed it away after she left school, treasuring it as a memory of what she had once been.
On the day, it fitted her perfectly. Even her sharp-tongued sister-in-law complimented her on how the light blue of the cloth suited her fair skin. But it was at school that the truth came out. Fashion is cruel and ever changing, and the style had changed drastically in a year and a half. The tops were now shorter and tighter, and the pyjamas flared wide at the ankles. Shaista in her old-fashioned suit sat like a dowdy aunt of a bygone era and, when she was called on stage to accept her certificate from the principal, she felt the gaze of all her former classmates, looking at her with pity.
It was Mun
iza, light-hearted, happy Muniza, whose only sadness was an unrequited passion for the filmstar Manoj Kumar and a tendency to plumpness, who completed the destruction, as only well-meaning friends can. ‘Shazoo, how are you? Where have you been hiding?’ And then, looking Shaista up and down, she added, ‘And you’re amazing. I think you fit better into that suit than when you bought it with me at Halwasia Market. How do you do it?’
Shaista tried to answer, to keep her composure. She loved Muniza, and knew how innocent the remark was, but the blood had already rushed to her face, and now as she tried to say something, anything, all she managed was a half-choked sob.
Muniza immediately became concerned. ‘Shazoo, are you all right?’
By this time Shaista knew that she wasn’t all right, would never be all right, and the tears wouldn’t stop. She kissed Muniza and, grabbing Ismat’s sleeve, left her friends behind forever.
At home she packed away the clothes of her childhood, and if her sister-in-law dressed up Shaista held her tongue. Ismat had given her three precious months, had given her pride and allowed her to leave the convent with her head held high. So now she kept it bowed low over her books. The days of clothes and fashion and attention from suitable boys pretending at heart-stopping love were over for her. The only things she could earn were the laurels of academia, and maybe some freedom there. She did well in her college, and excellently in her MA.
There were sweets the day her results were declared. Ismat brought them with him with the newspaper that carried the results. And the greatest delight for Shaista, although she could not say it, was that her sister-in-law was visiting her parents. Shaista didn’t have to be polite, or even humble. ‘First class!’ she marvelled, holding the newspaper in a tight grip.
‘With distinction, Bitiya,’ Ismat said, laughing his slow, deep laugh. ‘How many external students have ever received a first class with distinction?’
