by Omair Ahmad
‘You’ll never get away with this,’ Saurav hissed. ‘I’ll make you pay. My father will make your father pay.’
Jamaal flushed at that, but he didn’t answer, and suddenly the door was open, Mrs Tripathi standing there, with the dark, round face of Mr Thomas visible over his desk just behind her.
‘Tell the truth,’ Mrs Tripathi said, and she glanced sympathically at Jamaal, and he thought, She knows. She knows about my guilt.
His heart was beating so hard that he barely heard Mr Thomas say, ‘Come in boys.’
He didn’t invite them to sit, and they wouldn’t have dared to anyway. Mr Thomas came from a family of Keralite priests who had spent their lives implementing the strict teachings of the Syrian Orthodox church. Although he had chosen to go into education instead, there was something about his face that told you he was a person who believed in sin and hellfire, and repentance that came from suffering a long, lingering death on the cross.
‘Tell me,’ Mr Thomas said, and Saurav did: that his father had given him a hundred-rupee note to buy a new tie and belt for his school uniform, and that it had been in his pencil box until before lunch, when everyone except Jamaal was out of the class. Saurav could have stopped there, but he might have thought that it wasn’t enough, so he elaborated how Jamaal was a sneaking, cheating boy who didn’t take part in any sports and spent his time making jealous comments on the pens and clothes and everything else that the other kids had. As he paused to draw breath, Mr Thomas raised a hand and asked, ‘Did you check?’
The question caught Saurav open-mouthed. He didn’t know what he was being asked.
‘Did you check before you went out to play that your money was in the pencil box?’
‘Yes,’ Saurav said, but after a brief hesitation, and even Jamaal understood that Saurav was lying. Mr Thomas said nothing, but he said nothing significantly, and that made Saurav defiant: ‘Yes, I did check. Just before I finished lunch, before I went to the playground.’ Turning towards Jamaal, he raised an accusing finger. ‘He must have seen it then, he’s always staring after us, the greedy little thief.’
‘Mr Mukherjee,’ Mr Thomas said firmly, ‘I am sure you have been taught that pointing is rude.’
Saurav immediately lowered his finger but continued to glare at Jamaal.
‘Your whole case, Mr Mukherjee,’ Mr Thomas said, ‘rests on the fact that Jamaal stayed in during the lunch break, that he was the only person who stayed there, and that you had left your money in your pencil box and it wasn’t there when you returned. Is that correct?’
Saurav nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Do you often keep money in your pencil box?’
Saurav hesitated, and then said, ‘Yes, sir, when I have any.’
‘And Jamaal always stays in the classroom during the lunch break?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Can you explain to me then, Mr Mukherjee,’ Mr Thomas asked, ‘why, if Jamaal is the lying thief you say he is, he hasn’t stolen your money before?’
Saurav was nonplussed for a while, and then blurted, ‘But sir, there is always a first time.’
Mr Thomas nodded, and brought his hands together before him, the fingers interlocked. ‘Yes, of course you’re right, Mr Mukherjee. There is always a first time.’ But as Saurav started to puff up in victory, he added, ‘For example, this is the first time that I am hearing any accusations of wrongdoing by Jamaal. In the one and a half years that he has been with us, Jamaal has never given us cause for complaint. Unlike you, Mr Mukherjee, I might add.’
‘But he stole my money!’ exclaimed Saurav.
Now the Principal turned to Jamaal, and asked, ‘What do you have to say to this, Mr Ansari?’
‘I didn’t steal his money, sir,’ the words came out almost as a whisper, but Jamaal was surprised that they had come out at all. ‘I didn’t know he had hundred rupees, sir. I didn’t take it. I’ve never held a hundred-rupee note in my life!’
He hadn’t expected his voice to rise like that at the end, but it was true, all of it, especially the last, and telling the truth has an effect. Even Saurav started to look unsure.
Mr Thomas looked from one boy to the other, and said, ‘Stealing is a very serious charge.’
‘You can search my bag, sir,’ Jamaal said, gaining confidence.
‘He’s just hidden it on himself,’ Saurav said in desperation.
Jamaal faced the Principal and declared, ‘If you want, sir, I’m willing to be searched.’
Mr Thomas turned to Saurav. ‘Is that what you want, Mr Mukherjee?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Saurav said emphatically. ‘Search him, his bag, his desk. I want him standing in his underpants so people can see what a thief he is.’
The Principal’s eyes narrowed at the vicious triumph in Saurav’s voice. ‘Have they taught you Othello yet, Mr Mukherjee?’
Saurav shook his head, confused by the turn the conversation had taken. ‘No, sir … that’s next year. This year we are studying The Merchant of Venice.’
‘Hmm …’ Mr Thomas said. ‘Maybe it might have made a difference if you’d been taught that. But still, what do you make of these lines?
Who steals my purse, steals trash; ‘tis something, nothing;
’twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.’
Saurav had nothing to say. Although Mr Thomas spoke the words slowly, and the boys had been taught Shakespeare, Saurav was in no state to make sense of the old-fashioned English.
‘It means,’ Mr Thomas explained, ‘that while money is important, a reputation is far more precious, and the person who destroys another’s reputation steals from him something that is more important than any amount of money can be.’
When Saurav said nothing, the Principal continued, ‘Mr Mukherjee, you have accused Mr Ansari of being a thief. If it is true, and we shall find out soon enough as we go through Mr Ansari’s belongings, then Mr Ansari will be punished for being a thief. But, if it is untrue, then you have attacked something far more important, and have committed a far greater crime by slandering your fellow classmate who has done you no harm but whom you have insulted and defamed before your classmates, your teacher and your Principal. Do you understand me?’
Slowly Saurav nodded, but Mr Thomas sighed. ‘No, actually you don’t. It is something that I will have to explain to your parents, and to the rest of the school.’
Saurav paled at the mention of his parents, and Mr Thomas moderated his tone to blunt the force of his next words. ‘If your accusation is untrue, Mr Mukherjee, you will apologize to Mr Ansari before the whole school in the next assembly, and you will explain why you are apologizing.’
Then, for the first time, Jamaal felt sorry for Saurav, and said, ‘No, sir, that’s not necessary.’
‘I am the Principal, Mr Ansari,’ Mr Thomas all but shouted. ‘I shall decide what is necessary.’ Turning back to Saurav, he asked, ‘Mr Mukherjee, do you understand, and do you still want to put Jamaal through a search?’
It was an unfair question. Saurav had committed himself too much to back off now, but he didn’t have the courage to say it. He merely nodded.
‘Very well, Mr Mukherjee,’ the Principal said, ‘very well.’
12
Things changed for Jamaal after Saurav’s public apology. It mattered little to the students what Mr Thomas said about reputation and accusations. The quote from Othello was familiar to the older children, but the meaning of the quote was dwarfed by the sight of Saurav Mukherjee apologizing to Jamaal Ansari. For most of them the lesson was about power, and they understood very well that Jamaal might not be powerful, but he wasn’t powerless either. And maybe that was the essence of what the Principal was trying to teach them.
It didn’t win Jamaal any friends. If anything, it made the rest of the children maintain their distance from him. He was all righ
t with that; if no friends came close, then neither did his tormentors. It was a price he was willing to pay because his only loss was the fantasy of affection, nothing more, while he was spared the reality of humiliation.
He did make one friend, though, sort of, and that was of course Khalid. It happened quite unexpectedly, almost by chance. Jamaal no longer spent his time in the classroom during the lunch break, and instead went to the dining hall where, after finishing his meal, he would work on his assignments. There was always room for him to spread out his books where he sat, because nobody would sit at a table with him, just as nobody in his class would share a bench with him now.
Then, one day soon after Saurav’s apology, Khalid sat down across him at the table, and signalled to the boy at the counter. ‘Two teas, and a plate of gulab jamuns.’
When the tea and gulab jamuns were brought to the table, Khalid said, ‘There’s only one spoon here. There are two of us.’ And that made Jamaal’s throat close up with feeling. He hadn’t known that the sweets were for him as well, along with the tea. He had never had them here before—he’d never had the money to afford them.
Khalid waited until the boy brought a second spoon, before digging in, and inviting Jamaal, gesturing with his spoon, to do so as well.
Did Jamaal become an accomplice when he picked up that second spoon, or was it when he tasted the sweet, or when he let Khalid pay? Until that moment only silence had stood between them—or bound them. They had said nothing to each other about that afternoon. But surely those gulab jamuns were bought with stolen money, with Saurav’s money? Just as Jamaal had become part of the crime when he hadn’t raised an alarm while Khalid was looking through pencil boxes to see what he could steal, now he was accepting his role, accepting a bribe, maybe, for keeping quiet afterwards.
But things are never that simple, of course. Especially when it is a contract of silence, never acknowledged. When Khalid sat down and ordered that cup of tea he was also doing something else—sharing a table with a social outcast, and that too one who was a year junior to him. However unpopular Khalid himself might have been, the sheer fact of his seniority gave him a certain amount of power, and prestige, and he had set that aside so casually.
Nor was it a one-off. Every week, without fail, Khalid would sit down at the same table as Jamaal, and order a cup of tea, sometimes snacks. How could it be a bribe then, since Khalid ended up spending, in one- and two-rupee instalments, far more on Jamaal than the hundred rupees he had stolen from Saurav’s pencil box? It wasn’t as if Jamaal could help him get away with another such crime. In fact, after Saurav’s money went missing many students had reported small thefts of the past. Everybody was on the lookout, and if Khalid carried on stealing it could only have been outside the school premises.
Jamaal was certain that the thieving was far from over. There were days when Khalid would be flushed with a kind of fever, and though he said nothing, didn’t even smile, you could feel a glow of accomplishment in his eyes. And there would be a new pen in his pocket, or he’d be carrying a chocolate bar from which he ritually broke off some squares to pass across the table. Once, languidly, he stretched his arms, and Jamaal saw a watch that he knew he’d never seen on Khalid’s wrist before that day.
It might be an art, thievery, a performance art that you can’t share. Maybe that day, so long ago, Khalid had seen in Jamaal an audience, someone who would watch, and not say a word, who might even appreciate the sight of the law being casually broken, a bastard getting a bastard’s revenge. And the tea, the sweets and the snacks were Khalid’s way of thanking his audience. What is the point of artistry, after all, without appreciation? And Khalid wouldn’t have been the first artist to pay for applause or admiration.
And Jamaal, what did he get from it all? Was he merely greedy, his friendship bought and sold for a cup of tea and the taste of syrupy sweetness on his lips? Was that the whole price of his conscience? Or was it the deep hatred that only a coward can summon up against people he hasn’t the courage to face on his own? Maybe what Jamaal celebrated with every bite paid for by ill-gotten wealth was the defilement of a society that he could never challenge, where he was only a bit player, and whose accolades he could never win. Maybe what Khalid and Jamaal toasted with each cup of tea was their own defeat.
Whatever it was, it didn’t suit Jamaal. Whenever he shared something to eat with Khalid his stomach would give out and he would spend half a day painfully emptying his bowels, his stomach aching and his shit coming out in a spray of loose matter and fluids. It didn’t matter what it was that he ate. Whether it was a samosa or a gulab jamun, whether it was cooked at the cafeteria or came wrapped up as a piece of chocolate, his digestion could process none of it. But he never refused. Never in all the years at St Jude’s, where Khalid had another four and a half years to spend, all the time becoming visibly richer as he acquired one small status symbol after another, did Jamaal refuse to eat with Khalid. But after that, during the one year that he endured St Jude’s alone, his stomach ran smoothly, with never a hitch.
It was the unexpected relief that decided him. He needed to talk to somebody, and Malauna Qayoom could be found at the mosque. His father would be there as well, but Jamaal had stopped speaking of troubling or important things to Rafiq a long time ago.
It had started with the pen. Jamaal never spoke of it to his father, and when his grades deteriorated in school Rafiq tried to probe a few times before giving up in the face of Jamaal’s silent obduracy.
Besides, Rafiq, increasingly, had little time to spare. He was much in demand. Manoj Tripathi, the head priest of the Hanuman mandir, had won a bitter contest to become mayor of the town. He had spent one term consolidating his hold, and then had started to broaden his campaign. As mayor he had power to influence municipal projects, especially their names. After years of trying, he had accepted that the campaign to rename the town from Moazammabad to Methi was perhaps too ambitious, but he was able to sanction the repainting of street and neighbourhood signs. And he made good use of this limited privilege. Urdu Bazaar became Hindi Bazaar, Inayat Gali was renamed Lakshman Path and the residents of Ali Nagar found that they were now living in Arya Nagar. Anything with a Muslim name was slowly hidden and defaced, and almost every temple began, overnight, to use more powerful loudspeakers.
Not to be outdone, the mosques too bought more expensive loudspeakers, until chants and calls to prayer could be heard at all hours of the day, and much of the night. At the incredible decibels that they were being broadcast, words and languages seemed to blur, Sanskrit losing its classic austerity, merging into the languid, stretched-out vowels of Arabic. Without warning, the police swept down, and all the equipment was confiscated. But the temples received some of it back. The petitions from the mosques were piled up, and ignored.
They had broken the law.
Such times made unexpected space for Rafiq. Maybe it was only because his few dark statements had turned out right. Some years ago, for example, he had warned everybody when a TV serial based on the Ramayana was being shown on Doordarshan.
‘Don’t you understand what they’re doing? They are trying to make everybody a Hindu, it’s a conspiracy,’ he had said at the local mosque after Friday prayers.
And someone—Jamaal couldn’t quite place him—had asked, ‘Arre Ansari sahib, are you trying to ban believers from watching TV again?’
‘It’s just another form of idolatry,’ Rafiq replied. ‘And now they’re putting their gods and their idols on it.’
Maulana Qayoom was there, and he took the simple position that if it offended people they shouldn’t watch the programme. He didn’t have a TV himself.
But millions of others across the country did—in Moazammabad the main Hanuman temple put up three television sets for the devout, sponsored by the mayor. And not too far away, in Delhi, an ageing politician had an idea to make an attempt at the fame and power that had eluded him for long. You know the story, of course—though you’ll be surprised how man
y have forgotten, or how many young people have never been told. And that’s a useful thing to remember—nothing, in the end, will matter. Justice is overrated, don’t you think … But I digress again.
So this mousy-looking politician decided to ride a decorated, air-conditioned Toyota truck, as you remember, calling it a rath, that favoured vehicle of the god and king Lord Rama. He decided to make proper men of the Hindus by teaching them to be angry and to hate. And he drove his chariot along a track of blood and tears across the country to tear down a mosque so that a temple to Rama could be built upon its debris.
Riots had followed, and became regular after that, the dead piling up. A Hindu party came to power in Delhi—even if for only a fortnight, it was there. Every few months a young man, a Muslim, would be shot by the police in an encounter—that overused word suggesting almost an accidental intimacy!
And this was how Rafiq, who had warned against the serial, who had spoken of a Hindu conspiracy, came to be seen as a dark prophet, and somebody to listen to.
It is no surprise then that the topic of discussion after Friday prayers ever since has inevitably been the state of Muslims in India. This is how it is now—you will see it everywhere, as indeed you will at the mosque here, in Rasoolpur. And this is how it was when Jamaal, in his final year at school, without Khalid’s friendship but thinking only of the nature of that friendship, thought of speaking to Maulana Qayoom.
That Friday, after everybody had had their say, Jamaal asked quietly, ‘Maulana sahib, what does Islam say about breaking the law?’
‘Why, they should be punished of course,’ one of the others said, but the imam raised his hand.
‘I think you mean something different, don’t you, Jamaal?’ the imam said.
Jamaal wasn’t used to so many people staring at him as he spoke, and he stumbled over his words. ‘Umm … I mean, how should we treat them? Not the authorities. I mean … us? Can you still regard somebody well even if he is a criminal?’
