by Farahad Zama
Despite their history, Pari and Dilawar remained friends and kept in regular touch. He was more emotionally attuned than most men that Pari knew – not that she actually knew that many – and he had figured out how Pari felt about Rehman.
“Have you told Rehman yet?” he asked that evening on the phone.
Vasu had gone to bed and Pari was relaxing on the sofa in the living room of her flat, sitting in a corner with her feet tucked up under her and a cup of tea on the table beside her. “Told him what?”
“That you love him, silly.”
“No, not yet,” she said.
“What are you waiting for? Go on, tell him.”
“The tangerine curtains you suggested go well with the sofa cushions,” she said.
“I told you they would,” he said. “But don’t change the topic.”
“He came back just yesterday. And on the way he met Usha and he has offered to help her get material for a report she is working on.”
Dilawar went silent for a moment. “You are miserable,” he said finally.
“No. Yes…Oh, Dee, I don’t know what to think. He was so depressed when she broke off the engagement last time, but she may not end the relationship a second time. Maybe he’ll be happier with her, and shouldn’t I try to make him as happy as possible?”
“Rubbish,” he said, his voice reaching strongly across the two-thousand-mile expanse of India from Mumbai on the west coast to Vizag on the east. “I tell you that he loves you too.”
Pari shook her head and then realised that Dilawar couldn’t see her. “No,” she said. “He is still in love with Usha.”
“You are a foolish woman, but I suppose you’ve got to do it in your own time. How is Vasu?”
“He is good. He got ninety-five per cent in his last maths exam.”
“That’s great.”
“Don’t say that. I was telling him that he needs to work harder and get a hundred per cent next time.”
Laughter came down the wires. “You have turned into a typical Indian mother. Ninety-five per cent is not good enough. It has to be one hundred per cent. And when he gets one hundred per cent, you will tell him to aim for something more – maybe one hundred and ten per cent if they’ll give such a mark.”
“You don’t understand, Dee.”
“I do understand,” he said. “My mother used to be after me every day with the same refrain – study, study. Give the poor boy a chance to be a child. Let him enjoy life. There will be enough problems for him to face when he grows up.”
“If he doesn’t study and do well, I’ll put him on a train and send him to you. They say that anybody can make a living somehow or other in Mumbai.”
Dilawar laughed. “Of course, he can come over to Dilawar-Uncle’s house at any time. He’s a clever kid – he’ll be fine. Let’s talk about your love life.”
“No,” said Pari. “Let’s talk about yours. How’s Shaan?”
“You know Shaan. Always chasing something big – he reminds me a lot of Rehman, actually.” Shaan was Dilawar’s openly gay boyfriend. “We are planning to go to London soon.”
“Really? That’s great. Listen, I’d love to continue chatting to you, but I have to wake up early to eat for the sahri, before the fast starts, so let’s call it a night.”
♦
The pre-dawn air was cool as Rehman kicked the stand down and parked his motorbike. There was little traffic and the streets were deserted except for milkmen on their rounds and a few housewives, washing the small patches of road in front of their homes with water and decorating it with patterns of powdered rice. Rehman stretched and yawned hugely. Ahead of him, a group of labourers in sarong-like lungis were cleaning their teeth with neem twigs. A bearded man in khaki shorts and a saffron T-shirt walked up and said, “Are you here for the HUT training?”
Rehman nodded.
“My name is Narayana. Follow me.”
Rehman fell in behind him.
Rehman’s mother, who had been heating up food, had been surprised to see him awake so early. “Are you going to fast too?” she had asked, looking hopeful.
“I have to go out,” he had said, not mentioning that he was going on a training course organised by a Hindu religious organisation during the Muslim holy month of Ramzaan.
There were about thirty young men in the open area, limbering up for exercise. Some were stretching, trying to touch their toes with their fingertips; others were twisting their torsos and a couple of particularly keen men were doing push-ups. Most of them were in yellow T-shirts and khaki shorts. The man who had led Rehman in seemed to be some sort of leader because several young men broke off their exercises and came over to greet him.
“Namaskaaram, guru-gaaru,” they said.
Mr Narayana nodded to them, then turned to Rehman. “What’s your name?” he asked. “Who sent you here?”
Rehman was suddenly glad that he had practised this with Usha, but his throat was still dry as he answered, “My name is Raghu. I’ve heard about you from the priest at the Hanuman temple in Steel City.”
Steel City, the colony that housed the employees of the Steel Plant, seemed distant enough from town.
The man nodded. “I like the fact that you are not ashamed to wear our traditional Indian clothes.”
Rehman looked down at himself. He wore his habitual kurta pyjama – a long shirt that came almost to his knee and thin trousers, made from rough hand-loom cloth. He hadn’t given it much thought, then suddenly remembered how Usha had once tried to get him to change to more ‘modern’ clothes. He had proposed to her in that shop and she had agreed. How simple life had been then…
The guru clapped his hands. “Right, form into lines, boys. We’ll start our Surya Namaskaaram now.”
The men quickly formed into lines six deep, facing east. Rehman found a place at the back of one of them. The guru went to the front and faced east too, then raised his right leg and placed his foot against the knee of his left leg. His hands were placed together, palms joined in salutation. Rehman and the other young men imitated the leader. The guru must be quite fit for somebody of his age and size, thought Rehman in surprise. Standing on one leg wasn’t as easy as it looked, but Mr Narayana stood rock steady, unlike several of the younger men behind him, including Rehman, who wobbled like the knock-down clowns beloved of toddlers.
As the first rays of light filtered through the trees, and smoke rose from a nearby kitchen, the guru said loudly, “Aum suryaaya namah.”
They were worshipping the sun, reciting verses from the three-thousand-year-old Rig Veda with accompanying yoga stretches. Rehman was sweating and muscles that he didn’t know he had were screaming for attention before the guru stopped. The young men sat down on the ground, legs folded in the lotus asana – each foot tucked over the other thigh, spine straight, arms on knees. The guru turned to face them.
“I can see that we have a few new men here today. So, before we start practising karrasaamu, fighting with sticks, I want to talk about why we are here and what we are trying to achieve.”
A cool breeze, passing over the open ground, felt very pleasant to Rehman. He looked at the youths around him – he was one of the older men, in fact. Most of the trainees seemed to be no older than twenty.
“India is not called Bharat Mata for nothing. She is, indeed, our mother. She has given us life and she sustains us. She gives us food to eat and water to drink. She does not protest when we tear open her body to get iron and coal to build our industries. In truth, she asks for very little. But if we are her children, what is our duty to our mother?” The guru stared at the orderly group of men.
The youths remained silent.
“Our duty,” continued the guru, “to our mother is very simple. It is respect.” His voice grew louder. “Respect. And how do we show our respect?”
He pointed his finger to the young man sitting on the left of Rehman. The young man glanced around and said, “Me?”
The guru nodded.
“Er
m…” Everybody turned to look at the young man, who blushed uncomfortably and stammered. “Er…”
The guru let the moment linger and then continued, “This is the problem with the education system in our country. We have lost sight of the important things.”
Rehman smiled sympathetically at the young man and said out of the corner of his mouth, “It is like being back in school, isn’t it?”
The young man grimaced and whispered back, “This is worse than school.”
Rehman grinned.
The young man said, “My name is Babu. Did you say your name was Raghu?”
Rehman nodded and looked away, unable to meet Babu’s guileless eyes while confirming the lie.
“Do I know you? I think I’ve seen you before somewhere.”
Rehman’s heart gave a jolt, and he had to fight to keep the shock off his face. “No…” he muttered. “You couldn’t have.”
Luckily, the guru’s voice reached a new level and everybody’s attention shifted back to the speaker. The guru seemed to have forgotten his own question, however, because his next words had no connection to what went before. “We are an ancient culture. Sanskrit is the oldest language in the world. The Vedas are the repository of much wisdom – philosophy, law, even mathematics. But have any of you studied the Vedas in school?”
The young men shook their heads.
“How many of you have studied Shakespeare?”
Quite a few of the trainees raised their hands. The guru shook his head. “We have been free for over sixty years, but we have not let go of our colonial attitude. We are like a dog that keeps following its master even though he is kicking it.”
In the silence that followed, Rehman thought that while the guru was probably right about the hangover of colonialism in the Indian psyche, he was being a little unfair too. The men’s familiarity with Shakespeare was probably no greater than their acquaintance of Kalidasa, the greatest Sanskrit playwright. Surely, following the guru’s logic, knowledge of Macbeth was cancelled out by a familiarity with Kalidasa’s masterpiece, Abhijnanasdkuntalam.
“Is this how we show respect to our mother?” The guru’s voice was a whiplash. “No!” He answered his own question. “We should teach our children the eternal values of our dharma, our religion. We do not covet an inch of another country’s territory. We never have and we never shall. But by God, we should be ready to tear the heart out of any enemy who dares to lay covetous eyes on motherland.”
That’s true, thought Rehman. India had been invaded many times over the millennia starting with the Aryans and followed by the Greeks, the Mongols, the Turks, the Persians, the Portuguese, the French, the British and finally the Chinese, as late as 1962. But, almost uniquely among the nations of the earth, Indians had never attempted to conquer other lands. It is not that they were not militaristic; they had fought pretty hard but only ever among themselves, leaving the way open for foreigners to take advantage. India’s stormtroopers into the outside world had not been her soldiers but her religions; her philosophy, shoonya; the number zero of the decimal system; and, more recently, her software engineers and call-centre operators.
“Max Mueller, the German orientalist, said, ‘If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions, I should point to India.’”
It’s funny, thought Rehman, that somebody who was insistent on Indian pride and breaking colonial mindsets still looked to foreigners for validation.
“If you study the Vedas, all knowledge will be yours – from the deepest philosophical thoughts to town planning, from your responsibilities as a husband and parent to mathematics. If you study the scriptures, they can tell you the future and more.”
Rehman’s mind wandered. Why did all these religious types want to read more than there already was in the books? Wasn’t the poetry and the great truths in the books enough? It wasn’t just the Hindus. He knew Muslim ‘scholars’ who said the same about the Qur’an, while the crackpots were legion who claimed to have decoded the secrets of the Bible.
“The knowledge of the ancient Aryans was not restricted to our subcontinent.” The reasonable-sounding voice of the guru carried on. “Do you know that there is a mountain range in Europe called the Alps?”
Most of the men listening had indeed heard of the Alps. Weren’t they the white mountains that provided the backdrop to all those romantic Hindi movies filmed in Switzerland?
“The word Alps comes from alpa, a Sanskrit word meaning lesser or smaller, because, you see, the Alps are not as high as our own Himalayas. The city of Amsterdam gets its name from antardham, which means below the sea. And if you look it up on Google, you will find that Amsterdam is indeed below sea-level. Let’s go to London…”
The guru peered at them and several of the young men sniggered; going to London was a common euphemism for going to the toilet. The older man waited patiently until the titters died out. “London is named after Nandi – Siva’s mount, the bull. It’s original name was Nandinyam.”
By now, it was getting hot. The sun had risen over the roofline. Rehman could feel its rays burning his skin. Luckily, the lecture came to an end soon after and they were then taught how to wield a stick in ritualised combat exercises.
“Remember, your body is your temple. Treat it with respect. And discipline is the foundation of all good things in life. The biggest problem we Hindus have is our lack of unity. We don’t think of ourselves as Hindus, we think of ourselves as Andhras and Tamils, as Brahmins and Shudras. And political parties take advantage of this fact – they emphasise our differences and ignore our common gripes. The parties appease minorities because they vote as a bloc and give all sorts of advantages to Muslims that are denied to Hindus.”
Rehman almost shook his head before he realised the company he was keeping and stopped himself. The guru was now doing exactly what he had accused the mainstream politicians of doing: dividing Indians in his bid to create a common Hindu front. If Muslims were so advantaged by the system, why were Muslims still the least educated and among the poorest people in India? The fact that Muslims were overwhelmingly self-employed in small businesses showed that they were failing to break into mainstream jobs. Anyway, the idea that one community had to be promoted over another was silly. Again and again, people all over India had shown that they hungered for an efficient administration that provided sadak, bijli, paani – roads, electricity and water. For some reason, politicians seemed to find that very hard to provide, and instead played complicated games, using caste and religion, to get votes.
♦
That evening, Mr and Mrs Ali were watching the news on television in their living room with Pari. Vasu was in the bedroom doing his homework.
“Where is Rehman? Why didn’t he come home for dinner?” asked Mr Ali.
“He said he was meeting a friend,” said Mrs Ali. “He is eating out.”
“Who is this friend? At least during Ramzaan, he should eat with you when breaking the fast.”
Pari knew who the friend was, but she didn’t reply. Rehman was meeting Usha, his ex-fiancée, and apparently giving her a report on the training session at HUT, the Hindu religious organisation. It’s all a farce, Pari thought. Rehman was a fool not to see that getting him to infiltrate the training camp was not only dangerous but also a flimsy excuse for his ex to keep in touch with him. After all, why did they have to have dinner together to exchange a report?
“What did you say?” asked Mrs Ali.
Pari shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. Had she muttered her thoughts out loud? That woman would leave him again and Rehman would once more become unhappy. That was clear – why couldn’t Rehman see it?
Pari sighed. Why couldn’t she declare her feelings for him? It wasn’t so easy. She was a widow, dependent on the goodwill of his parents. She couldn’t jeopardise that, regardless of what Dilawar said, from the safety of a large city like Mumbai.
Small towns were different and she had to live by the rules here.
The doorbell rang and Mr Ali went out to the verandah. Pari heard the surprise in his voice as he greeted whoever was at the door and her eyes met Mrs Ali’s. The older woman looked baffled too. Who could be coming here at this hour?
Pari peeked out from behind the curtain. A large number of men, at least ten or fifteen of them, were at the door, led by the young imam. They all appeared to have come directly from the mosque, as they were wearing flowing white kurta-pyjamas and some of them still had lace skullcaps on their heads. Mrs Ali’s brother, Azhar, was standing with the crowd as if he was an outsider and not a family member. Pari frowned. Azhar’s eyes met hers and he quickly looked away, his face frozen. Her disquiet increased. This was definitely not a routine social visit.
♦
Usha’s turquoise dress looked black in the sodium-vapour lamps that lined Beach Road. The sun had set more than an hour ago and the crowds around Rehman and Usha, who were sitting on a low wall facing the beach, were thinning. Usha had been telling Rehman about the progress of her article, which her editor had asked her to cut by three hundred words.
“So what else did the guru say in his speech?” she asked.
Rehman, who had already mentioned that the knowledge of the ancient Indians had encompassed all of Europe, thought for a moment. “Oh, yes!” he said. “According to the guru, Muslims and other minorities are being appeased at the expense of the Hindu majority.”
“Did he give any examples?”
“Yes,” said Rehman. “The fact that Muslim men can have four wives while a Hindu man can have only have one apparently shows that Hindus are being discriminated against.”
Usha snorted. “If there is any discrimination in the personal law, it is against Muslim women, not Hindu men! Why are all these religious types so sexist? They talk as if only men count and women are chattels to be passed around.” She stopped to take a deep breath. “Did anybody tell you what the point of all this training is?”
“Not in so many words, but it is very clear. They are targeting young men, mainly unemployed or those struggling in jobs for which they are overqualified, and feeding their sense of injustice. They are showing them a higher purpose and drilling them in obedience in the name of discipline, to form a cadre that can then be used as cheap fodder for enforcing strikes – hartals – and supporting their favoured candidates in elections. It’s hardly unique. I’m sure this is exactly what is happening in Pakistani madrassahs with Muslim boys, for example.”
