Did Muslims feel the same?
By and by, I separated the perpetrators of evil from the goodness of all else: the joy of my Hindu friends, my continued friendship with Dr. Apte, and my love-hate relationship with India. Right now I could only think with concern of the way 1993 changed the direction of our lives—and now Anna, after all these years in Canada, away from these indignities, had landed right in the middle of a very upsetting situation.
In the living room, Dr. Apte, characteristically oblivious to the moods or tempers of others, fanned the flames of Isabel’s already advanced state of annoyance.
“Isabel, don’t leave. Sit down and have a chat with us. Premibai will make you breakfast.”
Mother nearly spluttered. Being invited in her own son’s home by this Hindu man, who at this moment represented all that was wrong in our world? She summoned all her reserve and years of grooming and sat down wordlessly, a feat of self-control for one who generally needed to achieve a fixed word limit each day. She swallowed several times, opening and closing her mouth as if to speak and thinking better of it.
Earlier, I had surrendered my day, and now I made ready to surrender my peace. Mother looked like a cougar ready to spring. Not in the fashion of the modern-day cougar, but the really old-fashioned family of felidae, puma concolor. This species is found not only in the hills and wooded areas, but amongst rushes and reeds. Though they are not commonly known to attack man, this was one of those rare moments on the brink. Dr. Apte, clueless of Mother’s distaste, kept patting the sofa as if inviting her to sit. Mother turned to face Dr. Apte, transferring onto him all her fears and anger.
If one refers to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, castir to cole, 1959, right next to the information on cats, felidae, and only separated by “Casus Belli—a situation said to justify a state in initiating war,” one finds ‘Casuistry.’ The classic connotation is one of ‘determining the morality of particular actions in particular circumstances, especially such as are apt to puzzle the conscience…’; a more modern definition might be ‘specious argument.’ From therein emerged the casuists; while most often seen in the Catholic and Anglican churches, our very own Hindu casuist sat right there in my living room, unbeknown to Isabel.
“Forgive me, Dr. Apte, for not particularly wanting to speak to you right at this moment. I am too disgusted with what you people are doing.”
Now Dr. Apte, incapable, I’d thought, of bewilderment, looked at Isabel in wonder.
“Do you mean Peter and I? I assure you that my relationship with Peter is purely platonic. We are friends, Isabel.”
“For heaven’s sake, Dr. Apte, do not be obtuse. Of course I know that my son is not gay.”
“You don’t know that, Mother,” I interposed. “I could well be.”
“Be serious, Peter. Besides, I am addressing Dr. Apte.” She turned on him once again. “I am talking about the attack on the Christians.”
“Ah.” He sighed. “Isabel, I sympathize with the Christians of Orissa and Mangalore, but what has that got to do with you and me?”
In the dictionary under the letter ‘c’ is a word that etymologists ponder over, a trifle confused as to its origins: Is it the early 13th-century French coart, from coe, tail, or perhaps from the Latin coda, tail; undoubtedly it reflects, though perhaps metaphorically, an animal retreating with his tail between his legs. ‘Coward,’ the dictionary explains, is ‘a person who lacks courage in facing danger, difficulty, opposition, pain.’ Ernest Hemingway refined the concept further: “…cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.” Mine was speeding from scenarios of loud accusations, to fisticuffs, to spitting, hatred, bloodshed—all as I looked at these two antagonists in my living room. I admit, too, that I was more than a little worried about Anna. I withdrew to the only sanctuary left, closed my bedroom door, and picked up Anna’s book.
That night we sat once again outside 19 waiting. Waiting for Joe. Waiting expectantly to hear the end of his story.
He bounced in to a rousing cheer from us.
“Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe”, we sang together in the tune of ‘Daisy, Daisy,’ holding each other and swaying from side to side. Joe smiled, and from where I sat, I could see his gold filling at the back of his mouth. It always fascinated us, the gold. I remember when I was little, Joe joined us and pretended to be sick. He gurgled and gagged, holding his hand to his mouth. Finally, he made a vomiting sound. He took his hand away, and in his palm, glittering in the bright moonlight, a small piece of gold rocked to and fro as if filled with its own life force.
“I even vomit gold,” he boasted to a very impressed midget audience.
“Joe, we did not sleep—what happened when you lit his cigarette?” We had not heard the end of this story left untold a few days ago. Joe, not cluttered with too many thoughts, knew exactly where he had ended his story the last time we had seen him.
“The fog swirled in big strong clouds around me, as if escaping from giant bellows. Peeping through it, I could see sparkles of light through the swirls. He is puffing, I thought, as the light glittered bright and then low.”He took a long pause and we held our breath...
“Suddenly”—he now put his hands between his knees and threw them outwards in the air above. We followed his action, all heads turned to the ceiling—“the fog cleared for a split second.” Now his palms, flat, circled the nothingness in front of him like they belonged to a painted French mime. “I saw him, tall”—Joe was on his toes now, holding his right hand high in the air to indicate the height of the man—“well dressed”—at this point he put his index finger of his right hand to the tip of his thumb, and shook it—“chiknaa, good-looking, except…”
We gasped edging closer to each other.
“EXCEPT?” Francis screamed shrilly, frightened.
Now Joe paused for a long moment, slowly moving his eyes around the circle, making eye contact with each of us.
“EXCEPT?”Francis screamed once again in a wobbly voice.
“He was this tall,” said Joe, repeating himself to prolong our agony. Standing up and raising his hands, he marked a spot on the wall. “At least through the fog I could see his neck shoot out from his collar.”
“Except? Joe, except what?” Peter now piped in impatiently.
“Except…he had no head.”
We clutched each other. “What happened, Joe? Tell us, were you afraid?”
“Ha!”He waved his hands in the air with a scornful look at us. “Ha!” he repeated. “Not at all… You see, I was born in a veil. I can see spirits. It’s a gift.”
The day Joe first got his job at the factory as a security officer, we all milled around him admiring the uniform, its lapels and buttons. That summer, the heat had reached giddy heights as we waited outside no. 19 for him to return from work. He arrived looking so important that we gulped our levity.
“I am now a security officer,” he said, saluting. From agape we travelled to a new high of respect, everyone greatly impressed with the word officer,’ not knowing what it really meant; no doubt something very important. Joe preened with our attention, but such irony… one would think with his police record it would be the last job he’d be eligible for! I have often wondered how real his jobs were.
“Something like the rank of a captain,” he said.
All the younger ones, round mouthed, large eyed—how did he get such an important job?
“Well, I was a captain in the army,” he said with a casual wave of his hand.
“Indian Army?” I asked him, disbelieving.
“No, the British Army.”
“Why did you leave?”
Joe, silent, seemed far away.
“Tell us of your army experience, Joe,” I persisted.
Gangabowdi ghosts forgotten, Joe launched into a new storyline.
“I was on the front lines in the Burmese war.”
“Were you a general in the army?” I asked.
; “Sergeant,” he replied without flinching. “Late one evening, crouched in our bunkers, an uncertain quiet fell upon us. The air was heavy, the kind you feel when smells sit unmoving, when the heart feels the weight and your shoulders droop; the sounds of fire were the imaginary vibrations in our ears that never stopped twitching. We watched the sun dip and the sky turn to a strange red glow, bleeding with the battle it had witnessed just hours ago. We sat silently, thinking of our homes, of simple things like walking down the street; a street with ordinary people going about ordinary things; simple food, simple arguments with the wife; I missed Chickpea especially at that moment.” Then he glanced at Shirlen and Miriam and added, “I missed your mother, though not just at that moment, but that instant was especially intense.”
His eyes shifted to the group. We fidgeted, a bit uneasy, the moment solemn, almost real, as Joe sat still, his eyes moving around unseeingly.
“I had lost my best friend not long ago in the battle and I needed to be alone. I left the group, thinking, how does one tell a wife that she will never see her husband again? How does one tell their children? ‘Sorry, your husband is no more?’ ‘Where is papa?’ ‘Sorry, your papa is dead?’ ‘Sorry, your husband will not come home?’ ‘Sorry, we tried to save him but he was already dead?’ What would they want me to do? Is there any way it can be done without the inevitable pain for both the giver and receiver of such a missive? I walked a mile down the field, sometimes tripping on parched land cracked by the sun, like a giant puzzle being put together. Every once in a while I picked myself up or stopped to get my balance, not just from the broken earth, but from this mad, passionate questioning and the hot blood that was trying to burst out from the top of my head.”
He sat on the floor like the rest of us; a faraway look glazed his eyes.
“War,” he said, “it is a strange contradiction to all that you are brought up to believe in. When is it right to kill another? I stood there not really knowing what we were sent to die for. Who were we dying for? Strips of coloured ribbon decorating our lapels? Is there anything real to die for except for a friend or close family? And, then too, we should not be called upon to die for anyone. Live perhaps, but die? That must be God’s decision.” He looked heavenwards and added, shocking us all, “That is, if there is a God at all.”
Nobody spoke in that moment. Joe had questioned our deepest faith in country, sacrifice, and God Himself. Eventually, after an eternity, he went on, “Through the loud, heavy firing that reverberated in my mind, I could also hear the silence and my heart’s uneven beating somewhere in my head. No, let me tell you, children, it is hard to lose your friends. One day you are drinking with them and the next you are praying that at least their spirits are walking by your side. But I don’t think they are. I think they lost their spirits, because though I was born in a veil I never saw them again…” He lapsed into a long silence and we, entering into his mood, waited patiently for him to emerge.
“Too late…I saw someone walk towards me. I knew it was the enemy; easy to see that. His hat and height clearly shouted enemy.’ I reached for my gun, but god-love-me, there were no rounds in it. I stood paralyzed in the centre of an open field and nowhere to take cover. He lifted his rifle…”
“What rifle was it?” I asked, hoping to catch him at his game.
“An M14,” he responded without hesitation. “I’d recognize it even 100 ft. away. My heart pounded like the ticking of a grandfather clock. His finger tightened on the trigger. I watched helplessly while he squeezed it. The bullet hit me right here.” He clutched at his heart, reeling back with drama.
“Joe, that is your heart you are clutching. If you were hit in your heart you would be dead.”
“Ah,” he said, “it missed. Because you see, at that very moment my heart was in my mouth.”
Perhaps it seems imbalanced that I should give Joe so much space in my own story with Anna. But the Marchon family was to play a big part in the drama, and it is only fair to spread them before your eyes so you might understand their influence on our lives.
19th April, 1992
It was the summer holidays in mid April and Dad could not take us to Mangalore for vacation. Once in two years is what is decent, he said. They will welcome us, but if we go every year they will tire of us. The truth of the matter is that Dad could not afford to take us to Grandfather’s every year. Dad never ever said he did not have money. It always was some very intellectual reason—‘You children must learn self-denial,’ ‘You do not deserve it, look at your marks in Math—94? Where are the other 6 marks?’ ‘You will not have time for studies if you go to the movies,’so on and so forth… So while we wandered the passages of our apartment building this summer break, knocking on Ms. Ezekiel’s door as she slept, throwing water balloons on passersby and going to Mazagaon Hill to play, Dad and the other men in the building were trying to pass their time too.
Easter descended on us once again I say descended because the Resurrection could only mean that Jesus died, went up to Heaven—we all know that Heaven is up above and Hell below—and coming back to Earth could only mean he descended. We waited eagerly for the Easter breakfast, when we could have that promised fried egg—Mum’s special version of the Easter egg. Dad gave us options:
“Do you want real eggs for breakfast, or do you want a hard sugar shell with a yellow cotton ball chicken, which you cannot eat, sitting atop it, and boiled sweets inside, which in any case you do not like?”
“Sugar shell,”said Ivan.
“Sugar shell,”said Susan.
“Sugar shell,”said I.
“Dad, you choose,” said Francis, the most practical of us all. Of habit we knew that Dad, never serious when he gave us choices, had already decided what we would have.
“Do you want to go to Mangalore or stay behind for the summer holidays?” Dad asked every other year.
“Stay behind for the summer holiday club,” we replied in unison. All this while Mother, already in the process of preparing for the trip, was measuring us for new dresses she would sew to take along. We could not look poor in the village we came from. We were from Bombay, the city of dreams!
So Francis took the practical route and gave Dad the choice. Of course Dad ignored our replies and took Francis’s option, ‘being the youngest.’ Fried eggs it was. I realise only now as I write it that most of our traditions centered around Dad’s purse and his belief in value for one’s money. Nevertheless, I am not complaining. We loved the fried eggs that came our way once a year on Easter.
As I mentioned earlier, Easter morning we sat around the dining table, all glowing and grinning at no one in particular, the smell of eggs frying sending us into a tizzy.
“I am going to eat my egg very slowly so that I taste every bit of it,” Susan said.
Susan had this very trying way of eating our favourite foods very slowly. She nibbled till we all finished our portions and then she began to slurp and relish hers in loud satisfied hmmms and ahhhs, enjoying not just the food but also the little picture she drew in her mind of us drooling as we watched her savour the goodie.
Not much later, that April, Dad saw an advertisement for a big poultry fair in Bombay. The advertisement had pictures of Leghorns and Rhode Island chicks—“highly productive layers,” it claimed. Such industrial fairs were rare, or at least were not the kind we knew of, because they took place in far-flung suburbia, very much outside our world.
He went across to room no.18. It was much too early in the morning and Inspector D’Souza, Peter’s dad—despite a slightly receding hairline, a tall handsome man, almost as handsome as Peter—opened the door, his face covered with lather and a razor in one hand.
“Yes, yes,” he said, wiping the lather from his tongue with the back of his palm and trying to be brief under the circumstances.
“That’s settled then, I will ask the others,” Dad said, knocking on all the doors and asking whether the other residents would like to accompany him to the fair.
Mr. D�
��Souza and Dad often made a twosome—fishing and other such manly pursuits. They returned from such trips with fish they boasted about, holding them up by the tail like in the many trophy photos they had seen. Everyone knew they had bought the fish in the market, but the two boasting men had no clue that Mum and Isabel, though they extravagantly praised the men’s fishing skills, knew their husbands had never caught a fish in their lives. Dad and Mr. D’Souza laughed, delighted to have tricked the kids and the wives, and none of us desired, even ever so slightly, to take away that pleasure from them. Such is love.
This hot April day begat yet another male sortie: Dad, Anthony Vaz and Inspector D’Souza set out early. Late that evening, all three of them came home with a chick each. All three men were excited with the prospect of having their own egg supply. For a month or so the chicks were kept sheltered in the apartments, but as they began to grow, the apartments crowded with the new members, so the men tied their chicks to the railing of the common verandah of the tenements, outside their own doors. They took the chicks indoors at night.
For superior egg quality, said the brochure that they had brought back with them from the fair, fortified chicken feed with “calcium and minerals” was essential. Dad wanted nothing less than the best eggs. Thus several sorties took Inspector D’Souza and Dad over 25 kms to Goregaon, every month, to buy the feed. Anthony Vaz stayed home, being forbidden by Lolly to ‘waste any more money on a bird.’
The feed acted like magic, and in two months the chicks had grown into full-sized birds. However, to Dad’s dismay and our eternal amusement, we watched a magnificent comb grow out of a red and blue head. This was no layer… Whoever heard of a cock that laid eggs?
Dad put a brave front to the gentle teasing he faced in the family—gentle because we knew how much he wanted us to have the best he could offer. Gentle, because we were in awe of him. “We can have it for dinner when it grows,” he said, and he continued to feed it with the special feed—“It’s a Rhode Island,” he boasted to visitors.
A Matter of Geography Page 12
