No God in Sight

by Altaf Tyrewala

  I almost swallowed the entire paan in alarm. I asked the old man if he knew Urdu.

  ‘How difficult can it be?’ he asked. ‘It’s mostly like Gujarati, no?’

  Abhay widened his eyes in angry disbelief. ‘What’re you saying, dad? Urdu’s nothing like Gujju! All those Persian words and complex sentence structures!’

  Mr. Joshi grinned. ‘Okay, okay, if I don’t understand, Nawaz-saab can explain to me. Fine?’

  I countered discouragingly: an additional student would mean extra fees.

  The old man agreed to pay an equal amount for himself—in advance!

  My gloom turned a deeper shade of black.

  The next morning Mr. Joshi received me, dressed in a starched white kurta-pajama. He trailed behind me on our way to the balcony. ‘Nawaz-saab, I haven’t learned anything new in decades, you know. Since I started the shop, my life has only been about profit and loss and…’ he dried up mid-sentence when we entered the sunny balcony where Abhay was sitting cross-legged on a rug. Abhay shifted aside to make room for his father. The old man placed a hand on his son’s shoulder and began settling down with dying-animal groans. My ammi does that too.

  ‘Okay, Nawaz-saab,’ Mr. Joshi said, rubbing his palms like a gurkha on a cold night, ‘we are ready for Urdu poetry.’

  I sat on a settee facing them and said, ‘First, I will explain the verse I asked Abhay to memorize yesterday. Then, I will teach three–four new verses.’

  Mr. Joshi nodded with wide-eyed absorption, while his son, usually receptive and eager, looked around dazed and sullen. A senior person’s overenthusiasm can be quite irritating. To quell the old man’s exuberance, I asked Abhay to recite the verse.

  Abhay nodded gravely. He closed his eyes and said, ‘Bukhara-e junoon shabo khayalon roo maaheer… Bukhara-e junoon shabo khayalon roo maaheer—Laila ilmata jaan-bajaan sekha.’

  The hair on my skin bristled. Abhay had repeated the first two lines like they did in films.

  ‘What was that? Junoon what khayalon?’ Mr. Joshi asked with intense interest.

  ‘Shabo khayalon,’ Abhay mumbled.

  The old man narrowed his eyes and begged, ‘Please, Abhay, say it again, na! It was so beautiful.’

  Abhay obliged with hesitation.

  On hearing it again, Mr. Joshi swayed his head as if in a trance, ‘Wow, Laila ilmata jaan-bajaan sekha, simply superb! Nawaz-saab, quickly, the meaning!’

  I studied the floor around my toes with a poetic pensiveness. Bukhara-e junoon shabo khayalon roo maaheer—Laila ilmata jaan-bajaan sekha. The meaning. My jaw shifted from side to side, pounding the paan in my mouth to oblivion. The meaning. I picked up one of my books, flipped through it and stared at the Arabic squiggles across some random page.

  ‘Er, Nawaz-saab, the meaning?’ Mr. Joshi coughed politely.

  I looked up with a start. ‘Ah, yes, the meaning.’

  I swallowed a bit of the pungent paan liquid, squeezed the pulp into one cheek, and began, ‘Measles…’

  I went to the window. I spat a perfect arc of blood-red juice and returned to my seat. ‘Measles…’

  I looked at their faces. The old man seemed on the verge of an orgasm. Abhay’s indifference had vanished too. Both were now looking at me like they were jewelers and I was the penniless customer who had swallowed a precious diamond that they would do anything to get back.

  ‘Measles…that…that cause multicolor mumps to… to…to…’

  I crumpled my face. ‘I cannot do this!’

  I stood up. ‘Sorry, the mood is gone. I cannot teach poetry today.’

  I shivered my hand over my skull. ‘I feel frazzled!’

  I stormed out the door, ran down the stairs, and cycled like a maniac all the way home.

  A Prelude to the

  Death of Sohail Tambawala

  Standing in the kitchen, waiting for the pressure cooker to whistle, Mrs. Joshi absent-mindedly traced the letters a-v-a-n-t-i-k-a on the wall with her wet finger.

  Earlier in the morning, while mulling over a crossword clue, she had doodled a-v-a-n-t-i-k-a on the edge of the newspaper; on coming to, she had drawn several lines across what she had scribbled. But the kitchen, unlike the newspaper and the rest of the house, was Mrs. Joshi’s domain. Reading the watermark on the wall, she experienced a severe shortage of breath, like the absence of a lung named a-v-a-n-t-i-k-a.

  The cooker hissed its last. Mrs. Joshi heard the main door bang open and someone rushing out. Mr. Joshi came to the kitchen. Mrs. Joshi flung a handful of water on the wall. I will divorce you if you take her name in this house again, Mr. Joshi had warned his wife, and then he had mouthed a line from one of the C-grade potboilers he loved to watch: this day forth, that girl is dead for me.

  ‘What are you up to?’ Mr. Joshi cried on entering the kitchen. ‘Why you throwing water on the wall?’

  Mrs. Joshi shook her head and started rolling a chapatti. ‘Poetry session over so soon?’ she asked.

  Mr. Joshi poured himself water. ‘Yes, Nawaz-saab wasn’t up for teaching today. What to say of these creative types.’ He gulped the water noisily and replaced the steel glass on the kitchen stand. ‘How much longer for lunch?’

  ‘Soon,’ Mrs. Joshi said.

  ‘How much longer for lunch?’ Abhay came and asked a few minutes later.

  ‘Soon,’ Mrs. Joshi said.

  After lunch, while gargling at the basin, Mr. Joshi asked, ‘What’s for tea?’

  From the bedroom, Abhay yelled, ‘Mom, make something light for dinner, okay?’

  Mrs. Joshi was at the table, still ploughing through her meal. After wolfing down their food, father and son thought nothing of getting up, leaving the lady of the house to finish alone like a laborer. Today, she ignored her family’s requests, busy as she was with tracing Avantika’s telephone number in the gravy on her plate.

  Abhay got ready and left. Mr. Joshi turned on the TV in the bedroom and immediately began cheering, ‘Yeaaa! Tendlya, saala, superb yaar!’

  Mrs. Joshi licked her fingers clean. Her eyes darted about. It was now or…She picked up the cordless lying on the dining table and dialed Avantika’s number. Divorce me, she thought, throw me out, but I will speak to my daughter.

  Mrs. Joshi was not supposed to call. ‘Don’t na, ma, let me live my life,’ Avantika had said. And so Avantika called once a month, precisely, on the last day of the month; first, with a warning blank call, and then again, five minutes later, to inform her mother that she was still alive, working hard, eating well, happy with her husband, okay, bye.

  Yesterday was the last day of March, but there were no blank calls.

  And last night Mrs. Joshi dreamt her daughter had died.

  She clutched the cordless, awaiting an answer at the other end. Stock apologies welled up in Mrs. Joshi’s throat to pacify Avantika if she picked up the phone.

  Avantika still hadn’t forgiven her family for disapproving of the short, swarthy, plain-looking man she had brought home and introduced as her fiancé. This was Sohail Tambawala? Yes, this was Avantika’s Sohail, a salaried nobody who lived alone in a tiny rented suburban flat. Next to Avantika’s overweight frame, he had seemed reedy, like the gist of an actual man. While Abhay struggled to hold back his chuckles and as Mr. Joshi rolled his eyes, Avantika had battled hard on behalf of the visitor, repeating aloud the answers he mumbled, serving him snacks he was too shy to take himself. She had protected Sohail like a bodyguard, refusing to leave him alone, shooting down the uncomfortable questions her father had tried to ask: What does your father do? Are you staunch? Do you eat beef?

  After Sohail left, Mr. Joshi snorted, ‘Where did you find that sample, Avi?’

  He was a friend of a colleague, Avantika replied calmly.

  ‘And you actually intend to marry that sorry thing?’

  Yes, she was going to marry that sorry thing.

  ‘Honestly, we don’t mind that he’s Mohammedan. But we do mind that he has the personality of a peon.’

  Fa
ir enough, Avantika said, maybe a peon-type was best suited for a girl everyone called Tuntun, mottee, haathi, jhaadhi, appu, or, if they were feeling less cruel, fat-ass.

  ‘Slim down, then see how many boys I line up for you.’

  No, she would not slim down, she could not slim down, she hadn’t eaten properly in years, and she’d had enough. Regardless of what her family thought, she adored Sohail, but that was beside the point. He adored her, he adored her, and Avantika challenged her father to find another man who would feel that way.

  ‘Must be something wrong in his head.’

  Avantika married Sohail some weeks later. Mr. Joshi had tried to stop his daughter, dressed in her bridal best, from leaving for the court. ‘Dad, please, just leave me alone,’ she had said. Her father had granted her her wish. Now even her brother, it seemed, had abandoned all memory of Avantika. On his current visit to India, anxious about making himself tolerable to his girlfriend in America, Abhay hadn’t once asked after his big sister.

  Suddenly, mid-ring, Avantika’s phone was answered with a clamor of knocks and bangs. Mrs. Joshi thought she heard a struggle for the receiver at Avantika’s end. ‘Avi… Avi…’ she gasped in panic.

  In the bedroom, Mr. Joshi had muted the TV and leaned back in his chair to see if his wife was done with lunch. He saw her with the cordless. ‘Who are you phoning, Shilpa?’

  ‘Hello! Hang on, please!’ Avantika cried out in the background.

  Mrs. Joshi heard scratches and scrapes, as if the telephone wire was being wound around someone’s neck.

  ‘Sohail?’ Avantika nearly shouted into the receiver. ‘Sohail?’

  ‘No, Avi, it’s mummy!’ Mrs. Joshi said. ‘What’s happening, beta? Avi?’

  ‘Nothing’s happening, mom. I just dropped the phone.’

  Oh! She had dropped the phone. Mrs. Joshi felt her insides lining up in the shape of a smile. Avantika—still the awkward butter-fingered girl she secretly loved more than Abhay.

  ‘What happened, mom? Why have you called?’

  Mrs. Joshi ignored the snub. ‘What else to do. Why you didn’t phone me yesterday?’

  ‘Who is it, Shilpa?’ Mr. Joshi was now at the hall’s entrance. ‘Who are you speaking to?’

  ‘Ya, I got busy. Listen, mom, I’ll call you later, okay…’

  Mrs. Joshi whispered, ‘Avi, wait!’ But her husband heard the whispered words and froze at the doorway.

  ‘What, mom? I’m in a hurry.’

  Mrs. Joshi, scared solid, gaped at her husband’s face.

  ‘Mom, speak! I don’t have time!’

  Mr. Joshi gestured his wife to continue. ‘Stop acting silly. Go on, talk. I’m not going to kill you.’

  With a suspicious eye on her husband, Mrs. Joshi stammered, ‘Avi, Avi. you are happy, no?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Avi, you are happy or no… just tell me if you…’

  ‘God, mom! Ya, I’m very, very happy. Okay? Bye!’

  Avantika, the Idealist

  I put down the receiver.

  I’ve done all I can. There’s no way out. I have to go to the police. If I don’t, Sohail’s supervisor will. And then there’s no telling how the cops will ill-treat me for failing to report that my husband left his office three days ago, on Monday evening, and never came home.

  The phone rings again. This time I don’t pounce on it like an animal. ‘Sohail?’

  ‘No.’ It is Mr. Das, my husband’s supervisor. ‘Mrs. Avantika, this is the last time I am asking for the password. I need the password to your husband’s PC, understand? Otherwise I will have to go and report…’

  ‘Do what you want!’ I hang up with such force that the receiver’s unbreakable plastic develops a hairline crack.

  Mr. Das doesn’t know. He thinks Sohail is being willful by not showing up at work. All he needs is the password to Sohail’s workstation. If he doesn’t get it, he will approach the authorities.

  Before he does, I must go to them myself.

  What else can I do? I begin pacing our hall. What-else-can-I-do? No matter what, people like us don’t go to the police. We suffer, we tolerate, we mediate, we pay antisocial men to settle sticky deadlocks, but we don’t go to the police. Not unless we wish to be harassed instead of assisted. My stupid, irresponsible husband has only misplaced himself without a trail. I know of people who have had their kin murdered and they’ve not even lodged a missing-person complaint.

  That bloody password! If it wasn’t for the password Mr. Das wouldn’t even care. Sohail isn’t the type one misses. On Tuesday, the first day of Sohail’s absence from work, I had made a series of password suggestions: Tika (what Sohail calls me), Fehmida (his mother’s name), Puzo (Sohail loves the Godfather). Mr. Das tried them all; none worked. And I thought I knew my husband well. ‘Where in God’s name is Sohail? Just ask him!’ Mr. Das demanded. I would have waited forever for Sohail to show up; I would have fabricated an elaborate lie to explain my husband’s disappearance—to others and to myself. But Mr. Das isn’t buying my excuses anymore. That bitch of a password! No way out. I have go to the police before Mr. Das does.

  Sounds at the main door. Someone’s fumbling with the lock. Is it…

  No, it isn’t Sohail. The servant enters the flat with her set of keys. I have been at home for the third day in a row, missing work. As Gangu-bai catwalks past the hall to the kitchen, she looks at me pointedly. Yes, my dear, I know that I am intruding on your private space and time. But this is my flat!

  I bathe and put on the shalwar-kameez Sohail’s sister sent from Dubai. I never wear it. The material is a clingy nylon. But at least it is a dull orange—the closest color I have to saffron.

  I look in the mirror. No, still too secular. I need more. I need…

  ‘Gangu-bai!’

  She comes to the bedroom. ‘What?’

  ‘Give me your bindi.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I have to go for puja,’ I say.

  She smiles like an approving aunt and unpeels her bindi from her taut, brown forehead.

  ‘Give me your mangalsutra also.’

  Gangu-bai starts on how this black bead chain is not just an accessory, it is a lifeline, her husband’s link to this world, her mark of respect as a married woman, and oh, okay, I can have her mangalsutra for two days of paid leave.

  Only one thing left: I bring down the packet of tandoori masala from the kitchen shelf. I take a pinch of the angry red powder and streak it down my middle parting. It burns, it stings. But so does the necessity of festooning myself before approaching the State for assistance.

  Looking somewhat like the perfect patni, I leave the house with my handbag tucked under my arm and my miya’s photo inside it.

  As always, all eyes on the street are on me. And, as usual, some lout tauntingly trumpets like an elephant.

  ‘Sanpada Police Chowki,’ I tell the auto-rickshaw driver. He shakes his head sadly and yanks at the start shaft.

  I am glad the road is bad; the auto is forced to move at the pace of a sick snail. It allows me time to survey both sides of the street. I am still hoping to spot Sohail so I can abort the mission.

  I haven’t told anyone else; not his family, not mine. Outside of our private universe, Sohail and I wish to keep our dealings with others to the bare minimum. It helps that I work as an inconsequential graphic artist at an ad agency and Sohail is a medical transcriptionist. Now it is in this society, this world, that my Sohail has disappeared, leaving a gaping hole in the wall around our lives, so that strangers can stroll in and out, demanding passwords, threatening me with dire consequences.

  ‘Something stolen?’

  ‘What?’ I look at the auto driver’s reflection in the rear-view mirror. A trickle of sweaty masala dribbles down my forehead. I wipe it away with my handkerchief.

  ‘You are going to the police station. So I was wondering if you have been robbed or something.’

  I don my goggles to discourage any more small talk.

  I
have been robbed of my life—how about that, you nosy chap. Of the nineteen hospitals and three city morgues I telephoned, none claimed to have admitted a wounded, stabbed, or dead man named S. Tambawala. I am afraid he could be lying in a gutter killed by a heart attack. Sohail is only twenty-nine, but he smokes too much. He says smoking is like belief in God—no real reason why, it just feels good. He worries I might get diabetes, but he has never asked me to lose weight. Just die after I do, okay, Sohail and I tell each other.

  The driver turns on the radio. ‘Please turn it off,’ I snap. Thumping love songs would make me vomit on this most dismal rickshawride of my life, made worse by the din of traffic and the dusty heat.

  In the distance, the purple arch above the gate of Sanpada Police Chowki comes into view.

  We are held up by a signal. I look around with a desperation only Sohail can trigger. Left, right: strangers and stray dogs.

  Oh, Sohail, where are you?

  A silly notion struck me last night: I became convinced Sohail had left me. I turned our flat upside down and swept the floor many times over in search of any goodbye note or memo that my husband may have written before setting off. I found nothing, of course. All of Sohail’s belongings, including his toothbrush, are exactly where they should be. As I said, it was a silly notion. Because people like us, Sohail and I, we don’t leave each other. All that coupling-up and breaking-off is for other people—other non-fat, non-smokers for whom the world is a pool of lovers from which to pick and choose.

  The auto-rickshaw stops outside the police station. The driver refuses to take money. ‘I’ll pray for you,’ he says. ‘Beshtofluck, haanh madam.’

  Not good enough, my dear man. I need better luck than that.

  I go through the wide-open gate and into a white-hot courtyard, like entering a nightmare in broad daylight. So this is how a police station looks, like an old Parsi bungalow, quaint and empty. Empty? Wait! Where is everyone?

  I walk across the compound and up a short flight of stairs. The door facing the staircase is locked. Two other doors on either side are also locked. What is this, a police station or a mill on strike? Hello!