Split

by Taslima Nasrin

  A beautiful man had been a lifelong dream for me, a dream that was yet to be fulfilled, and I desired K with the force of all my unfulfilled yearnings, albeit in silence. It did not remain a secret for long, though, not especially after a couple of screwdrivers at Sheraton managed to unlatch a floodgate of confessions one night. K was not a doctor or a writer, nor had he ever read any of my books. Baharuddin, a journalist in the Calcutta-based daily Aajkaal, had come to my house to see me, with a friend from Jaidevpur. That was when I had first met K, and although Baharuddin had returned to Calcutta, K had kept coming back to see me.

  There was nothing common between our worlds, but all I knew was that I had mingled with my kind for long enough and it was time to see how the other half lived. I had applied for a telephone nearly a year back but there was still no sign of a connection. K promised to try and help, although I was going to have to accompany him to the concerned minister’s house. Accordingly I went with him to see the telecom minister—by which I mean we went, had tea and biscuits, listened to what the man had to say and then left with a smile. Thanks to K’s connections, my connection was soon approved, something I doubt I would have managed to get done on my own.

  Back in Mymensingh I had taken the connection by myself and we had never had to run to a minister for help; a simple application had done the trick. But Dhaka was not Mymensingh and applications meant less than nothing there. Corruption was at an all-time high and things were in such a state that a simple application did not move from one table to the next without multiple palms being greased. Or one had to have connections, and K’s role in helping me get a phone automatically elevated his status in my house.

  During Ershad’s reign K had been the chairman of Gazipur district, something he was exceedingly proud of, and the more I learnt about his life the more I realized how much it was premised upon both a thirst for power and complex equations of commerce. Not that K was big fish in this murky pond, he was at most small fry, but he did have aspirations of becoming a big shot. When he declared which ministers he knew, his friends, relatives and also the ones who always listened to him, all in an effort to impress me, it was nothing short of an ugly display. It was at moments like these that I was even more convinced that our lives were entirely too different.

  Besides, he was married and had two daughters, Ananya and Sukh. Quite ironically, Sukh was also the name I had picked for my daughter if I was ever going to have one. K’s wife H was a short, plump, extremely fair woman. We met only on one occasion, that too because of Nirmalendu Goon. K had asked her to wait in the car while he had come up to meet me. On his way to my apartment Goon noticed the car and asked him whether it was his wife sitting inside. While K had gone pale in an instant, I had shepherded all three of us downstairs to meet her.

  K did not like speaking about his wife and he used to change the topic whenever I had a question I wished to ask him about her. In fact, not just H, he did not feel comfortable talking about his two daughters either. Perhaps if he had been able to prove that the only people he had back at home were his mother and brothers, and not a wife and children, he would have been happiest. I had no problems with his family, though, especially when he stared at me with entranced eyes or silently took my hand in his. I did not move my hand away and when his face bent closer to mine it did not take long for our lips to meet; more than K himself, that was something I needed desperately.

  The first time he was a little wound up, his fingers trembling in anxiety over my warm flushed skin, but gradually the warmth helped thaw the icy hesitation in him. For me the needs were exclusively physical, while for him they were undeniably emotional; his body gave me pleasure and my vitality gave him satisfaction. There was no bond between us as such except that of a free and open relationship and a mutual understanding that our respective personal lives were not up for discussion. It was a relationship of convenience and need, or perhaps not even that. It was not meant to be anything per se, and even if it was anything neither of us dwelled on that aspect too intently—it lasted because there was no harm in it at the end of the day. I could do without K and at the same time I could not. For instance, if he did not come by on a certain day after visiting a couple of days in a row, I would invariably end up missing him, much like one misses a habit. Once he did not come by for two weeks. After two weeks when he suddenly turned up one day it was astonishing to say the least.

  ‘What is it, K bhai! You were missing in action! Did you forget the way to this house? Or has the kharaj34 been low recently!’

  ‘Milan, don’t be crazy!’ K replied to Milan’s jibes, attempting to maintain a serious facade.

  K was no longer chairman. He travelled to Dhaka from Jaidevpur every day to drop in at the various offices at Motijheel. I had no way of surmising what his source of income was though he told me he had businesses which were mostly run by partners and the primary reason behind his trips to Dhaka was to meet them. When questions arose in my mind about K’s profession Milan clarified them for me.

  ‘Bubu, don’t you get it? He gets kharaj.’

  ‘Kharaj?’

  ‘Yes, kharaj.’

  This was a new word for me and when I asked him what it meant Milan tried explaining. ‘Oh, it’s nothing. Say you have an industry in my area, so you give me some money and I will try and manage your business so that someone with nefarious plans does not cause your business any harm. While he had been chairman he must have used his influence to help someone in their business. Now he gets money from them.’

  I asked K about it too. ‘They say you get kharaj from people!’ Our interactions had become decidedly informal and the jump from the polite formal ways to the distinctly informal ones had been rather quick. K only smiled at my question. I was thinking about him; even if it was nothing too significant, because of the ‘kharaj’ I was curious about him at least. This little bit of information was good enough for him and the grin refused to slip from his face.

  Our relationship was in no way that of a couple, though that was probably what K wanted ultimately. But it was impossible for me to think of K as a partner. He was a friend, almost like a family member. Kulsum was away and my flat was not getting cleaned. One day he took off his shirt and shoes and cleaned my house. He followed every one of my orders to the letter. K was aware that I was not in love with him and in time he grew desperate with the need to change that. If I were to call him beautiful, his face would shine with joy and he would admit freely that a few months or years back he had been even more beautiful. At times he came across as a two-year-old, such was his behaviour, and on other occasions he would be like a jealous lover. He was suspicious of everyone who came to my house, assuming I had a secret relationship with them and his suspicions amused me as much as they annoyed me.

  I did not particularly care about his issues with inferiority. When I paid him attention it made him happy and when I did not he would go mad with rage thinking I was about to cast him aside. I had no intention of doing that but I did not want him to disrupt my peace either. I did not let myself get disturbed and whenever he tried pulling something on those lines I asked him to leave immediately. I was certain that I did not need another person to think they were in control of my life. Who was Khusro? Why did he visit me? What did he want? Why was I letting Alamgir into my house? What did I have to do with Rashid? Whenever he tried asking such questions he learnt quickly enough that I had no patience with such pot-stirring. His arrogance was welcome everywhere but with me. Who was allowed in my house and who was not, or how my life was going to pan out—these were my concerns and mine alone.

  K often spoke about his wealth. He had a lot of money, a lot of property, a new house under construction in Dhaka, a new car, and so on and so forth. Once, Milan, Yasmin and I were invited to his house. His mother and other family members were at home but neither his wife H nor his daughters were there. It was not difficult to guess that he had taken me home probably because they were not there. A small two-storey place in Jaidevpur, the
house had been built by his father and there were not too many signs of the wealth he usually spoke about. Despite his fussing over where to make us sit and what to give us to eat, Milan came away disappointed with the experience. ‘Bubu, hadn’t K bhai said so many things? I was expecting a palace! And we got a house with the paint peeling off, plus the broken, rundown furniture. The only thing he has to show off is that car. He must have bought it with all that kharaj money.’

  The more K tried to impress us with his efforts to prove he was a tycoon, the less we respected him. In time he became like a laughing stock, his words and his actions like munchies with our afternoon tea, or a constantly performing joker in a circus. But whenever I took him to my bedroom and closed the door behind us I loved him and he gave me joy and profound pleasure. I was done with being a piece of meat trapped under a heaving man, my presence there solely for his pleasure. No man had ever bothered to find out if I was satisfied, they had only dived in for their own; K would have done that too because men are not used to being concerned. But I asked him to be concerned, told him to be the moon and bring me my tide, made him arouse me and touch every trembling pore, and made him lose himself in loving me. K never disappointed.

  In fact, giving me pleasure brought him pleasure too and eventually it so happened that my pleasure became the top priority, the reason for all of it to begin with. I was the one who had K, whenever I wanted, however I wanted, and the fact that I needed him made him swell with pride. His desire to bring me joy was an ever-increasing urge and he took me away on trips, brought me gifts and did everything else that he thought would make me happy. Of course he could afford to do many things, but even those things that were beyond his reach he tried to do for me.

  When I was suddenly transferred from Mitford to Jamalpur without any prior notice we decided to drive to Jamalpur in his car. I was going to go and join my new post at the civil surgeon’s office in Jamalpur and then come back with him the next day after putting in a leave of absence. The drive to Jamalpur was wonderful and we stopped at Mymensingh to stay the night at Abakash before carrying on the next morning. It was on rare occasions that I had the chance to get away from the humdrum of Dhaka and while driving K told me many things about his life.

  He told me stories from his childhood, about his friends and their games. Our childhoods were so alike that despite K being older than me by nearly ten years we appeared to be of the same age. Besides, he looked young and his liveliness ensured that he stayed that way. Gradually we left the brick and concrete city behind us along with the shrieks of the trucks and buses on the road, the metropolis giving way to a sea of green dotted with small mud houses in the distance and miles of agricultural land and peaceful hamlets. Travelling never failed to excite me.

  Arrangements for my stay had been made at the Jamalpur Circuit House. The civil surgeon had offered to book two separate rooms but I had insisted on one. ‘Is he your husband?’ the surgeon had asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then two rooms . . .’

  ‘No, one will be fine.’

  That night it seemed we were back to our sixteen-year-old selves, our excited and ecstatic bodies writhing in seventh heaven the entire night. I had never seen K so happy before. He did not have me all to himself too often and the two of us being able to spend some time together alone, far away from our busy lives in Dhaka, was akin to divine providence for him. I had barely any time to spare for K in Dhaka and although the time I did get to spend with him was usually enough for me, it clearly was not enough for him. In Dhaka we met frequently, and then again we would end up not meeting for days. I always missed him during such times.

  K was important to me as much for the little playful games we liked playing as for the serious discussions we often used to have. ‘You know anything about a job? Help my cousin get one!’ K never said no to anything. Even if it was not possible for him he would promise to try. And he did try, like many other things he tried to do, even if he failed to keep his word in the end. My cousin Motaleb had been looking for a job for the longest time and used to come to me often to ask for my help in getting him one. In our unruly and poverty-stricken country even a university degree did not guarantee a job for someone. Thus if someone in the family was successful or financially well-off it was common for a lot of other relatives to gravitate towards them. Some came for financial assistance and some in search of employment.

  Since I did not have the necessary clout to get anyone jobs K had to step in; he managed to talk to a friend of his, the owner of a bread factory, about a job for my BSc cousin Motaleb. Irrespective of the nature of the job, for an unemployed young man it was as good as any other. On my part, I could not help feeling even more grateful to K for all his help. Obviously that was what he wanted anyway, to prove to me once and for all that he was not someone to be trifled with, that he too had power and influence. He often took me along with him to his rich friends’ houses or offices in his shiny red car, all in his vain effort to impress me.

  Once at the Kankrail crossing his car collided with a rickshaw. In a fit of rage K got off and began to beat up the rickshaw-puller mercilessly. When my screams from the car failed to stop him I had to get off and drag him back to the car in front of the gathered crowd, with K growling about the dent on his car. I was so incensed by his inhuman reaction that day that I did not allow him to enter my house for days after the incident. In time K realized that I was not reacting to his physical strength and bureaucratic clout the way he wished I would and he switched his strategy to telling me touching stories of his humanitarian side—the many deprived and unfortunate souls in Jaidevpur who approached him for aid and how he helped them.

  I never knew how he was when he was away from me but at least in front of me he had to be what he claimed he was. Very soon, driven by his emotions, he took to writing poetry, most of it about me. While I would be busy speaking to journalists or other authors he would wait for me for hours on end, sitting and writing poems. If ever I was to offhandedly remark that his poetry was good he would immediately flush with embarrassment and pride and start putting in more effort. In effect he wanted to prove to me that he could write too. A person who had never read a book in his life suddenly started reading one fine day.

  My simple, straightforward, undefined but stable relationship with K survived the test of time. It did not bring me pain and neither did it waste my time. I did not have to feed it constantly to help it grow. Neither did I have to lose sleep over where it was headed. The relationship took care of both my worries and my loneliness. K was sometimes a young man, sometimes a baby, sometimes visible and sometimes not. But as long as he remained in front of me he was mine and absolutely so. Whether he was a human being or a monster, a friend or a foe, he was mine and I could rain my anger, sorrow, pain and all my joy upon him. If I was angry I could tear at him and draw blood, cry on his shoulder if I was sad or raise hell if I was happy, and yet he tolerated everything silently. I could be drawing him close and showering him with love one minute, or shouting at him to get out the next, but nothing I did or said, or any number of kicks, slaps and punches failed to drive him to anger. He knew I was going to pull him towards me again and possibly he also knew that I felt a certain kind of love for him.

  I did love him. I also loved my favourite doll. After a long tiring day out in the world everyone wants something that is their own, be it an object or a person. K was a bit like that for me. The fact that he loved me, this knowledge gave me relief, it gave me happiness, it gave me security, it gave me freedom and it helped me stay busy. Even if I did not acknowledge it, I knew I needed him in my life. I could take him anywhere without feeling even an iota of hesitation. He accompanied me to the houses of my author friends, or they met him at my place whenever they came over, and during our addas he would simply sit quietly in one corner and listen. No one asked me who he was or what was our relationship and I simply assumed that they drew their own conclusions. Perhaps this raised a few eyebrows too. However, I
was not too worried about raised eyebrows and having failed to garner my attention the eyebrows too returned to their natural shape in due course.

  With my sister, her husband, Kulsum and even Mother at home, I would take K to my bedroom and shut the door behind us. Not a single person ever said anything to me about it, especially Mother, and often after I came out of my room it was she who stayed hidden somewhere inside so as not to embarrass me. Mother never wished to come in the way of my joy; she wanted me to have everything that brought me happiness and satisfaction. In fact she worried about me so much that she worried about my expenses of her own accord even though I was not going through any financial crisis. Sometimes she would worry that more food had to be bought if she stayed over and off she would go to Mymensingh to get rice, pulses, vegetables and anything else she could get her hands on from Abakash. Unwilling to sit and rake up my bills she would then head back to Mymensingh again, but not before giving Kulsum various tips on how to take care of me.

  Was I becoming like Father? My temper at least was like his. Everything ran on my money and according to my orders. While people in Shantibag respected me and were always at hand to get me whatever I required, people at Abakash too were wary of how they spoke to me. Father no longer spoke to me with rage in eyes and gnashing teeth. Rather his voice was mellower and more placatory when he made requests. ‘Do you have anyone connected who can help with jobs? See if you can do something for Manju.’ Manju, Uncle Iman’s son, had not studied too far. Just like Father had always been responsible for the education and employment of his family in Nandail, I had to be a little responsible too. I spoke to Khusro and managed to get a job for Manju in the former’s generator factory in Savar, a worker’s post with basic pay.