by Zeenat Mahal
She and Swaba graduated from college a month later but their celebrations were muted. Everything seemed to be discolored and shadowed by Fardeen’s accident, his consequent depression and constant anger. She caught sight of him sometimes, brooding in the study, or in the living room.
Swaba and her mother often talked about how he refused to have corrective plastic surgery.
“I don’t know why he becomes so volatile at the mention of surgery. I mean it is a normal conclusion, I would presume. What is so wrong about that? He nearly bit my head off,” complained Ami.
“Of course it is the natural course to follow, Ami. It’s just too soon for this kind of talk with him. Don’t keep pestering him about it. The more you press the more stubborn he’ll get. You know how he is. He’ll get around to it. Let it be.”
“I wish he’d come around sooner. I’m not strong enough to see him kill himself slowly. That’s what he’s doing. He’s refusing life as he knew it.”
“I know he is being unreasonable. The doctors said the more it is delayed, the harder the chances of a full recovery and the longer it will take.”
“Yes, exactly,” agreed Ami. “Chinni Aunty’s nephew is a doctor in Germany. She talked with him and he said the same thing. There’s a certain window of time that needs to be used, he said. After that, it will become more difficult.”
“Yeah, when in doubt ask the neighbor,” Swaba murmured.
“What did you say?” Ami asked suspiciously.
“Nothing, Ami. Swaba’s being silly,” said Zoella quickly.
“Hmm. I just hope Neha is able to convince him. I talked with her the other day about it.”
Ami looked troubled though.
Swaba said tartly, “And what did she say?”
“Erm, she seemed…unconvinced.”
“Surprise, surprise!”
“Swaba,” her mother warned.
“He deserves better Ami.”
Her mother sighed.
“Yes. Yes he does.”
***
Fardeen was finally alone. He’d had to shout at Abba to make him go for his regular golf, which Abba now felt guilty playing because his son was home, brooding over his messed up life. Thank God his parents were strong people and weren’t the whining sort.
“How is the fact that I have to sit at home your responsibility?” he’d questioned his father. “Please live your life like you normally would, Abba.”
“I am living my life. I want to sit here with my son. Is that too difficult to understand?” he’d replied with his I’m-so-reasonable face on.
“I’m a grown man. I don’t need a baby-sitter,” Fardeen had yelled.
Abba was on a martyr’s trip or something.
“Is it the principle you object to or my company?” he’d asked in his calm voice, which incensed Fardeen further.
Frustrated, he’d retorted, “Right now, I’m afraid it’s the company.”
“Shall I send your mother?”
“No thanks.”
“Don’t be such a brute to your mother. I can take it but she…”
“Look at me. I am a brute!”
“Is that it then, Fardeen? Is that who you are under all that glitz and glamour? Don’t give in to this negativity, son. I know it’s hard but maybe you should think about people who never had opportunities like you and are never likely to get them. Maybe instead of indulging yourself in self-pity, you should ask yourself what you’ve given back?”
Fardeen didn’t recall what he’d said but he remembered shouting a lot. Of course, in response, the man had stomped out like the big baby he was. Fardeen felt the stirring of laughter but it evaporated because he realized that his father was right. What had he given back?
Someone’s presence in the living room distracted him.
It was that friend of Swaba’s. He was relieved that the unblemished left side of his face was visible from her vantage-point. He’d become aware of her as soon as she stepped into the room. That’s how it was now. He seemed to have developed a sixth sense, like spider-sense without the super-powers, a tingly feeling that warned him someone was looking.
He hated to be watched. They’d all been doing that since the accident. Some gawked in horrid fascination, while others, like his father, tried to discern his state of mind so that they might jump in with false optimism. Physical damage was so much uglier than internal destruction. What people couldn’t see didn’t bother them.
No one wanted to see ugliness: poverty, disease, disability. People shrank from disfigurement and deformity. Didn’t they know the wreckage that was invisible could be so much more dangerous, so much more toxic?
Then there were those well-intentioned cookie-cut remarks that people thought they just had to make—their need to say ‘the right thing’. Only it never was somehow. People kept telling him everything happened for a reason. Allah’s will was for the best. What possible good could come out of this, he wanted to shout.
What had he done to deserve this?
It was a random accident. If the kid driving the car that had rammed into his hadn’t been drunk, had been less sure that his father’s money bought him immunity, Fardeen would still be whole. The kid would still be alive too.
There had been so many accidents like these. School kids driving recklessly as if they were immortal. He’d heard about the accidents, the stories, tut-tutted with regret and moved on. He’d never thought about them with more than fleeting sorrow at the loss of a life, at the futility of it.
Now he was one of those stories.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that Zoella was still staring. Before the accident, she used to look at him with a dreamy lovelorn expression. She’d stared at him with dazed eyes unable to form a coherent sentence in his presence. Most girls had stared at him that way, so he’d never actually taken any notice of her. Now, she couldn’t bear to look at him for long. Her eyes flickered away every time they landed on his face.
Funny he’d never noticed how beautiful she was before. That was all he seemed to observe about people, especially women, since the accident. He felt like a leper in the presence of beautiful women. He felt exposed. This was what Kafka’s Gregor must have felt like when he woke up as an insect. People looking made him want to hide.
“What are you staring at?” he growled.
She was startled and stammered, “I’m sorry. I was just…”
“Staring?”
He turned his face. Zoella inhaled sharply.
When Fardeen looked into the mirror, he saw two men. It was like looking at a different person. The right side—scarred, skin stretched in a shiny mask of pale red and wrinkled dark, his eye almost invisible in the melted mask of skin and tissue—was angry, bitter and destructive. On the other side, a sane person pleaded with him to hang on to reason.
She swallowed as if trying to curb her emotions.
Did she feel sick looking at him?
“Can’t look at me can you? And here I thought you’d been crushing on me since forever.”
Zoella’s head whipped up.
“I’m sorry, what?” Blood rushed to her face.
His own laughter sounded bitter to his ears.
“A face, just a damned face, that’s all. It shouldn’t matter that much but people are so damned superficial.”
The look on her face made his jaw tense, and he knew that the burnt side of his face whitened when he did that. He knew exactly how frightful he looked. In a cold, cutting tone, he said, “Stop looking at me like that.”
Zoella looked like she was going to cry. She opened her mouth to say something, probably to reassure him. Stopped. Started again.
“Fardeen, don’t be like this. You can get plastic surgery and you can look like yourself again.”
“Look like myself? Who do I look like now? Please don’t say Brad Pitt. He’s too pretty.”
She didn’t answer and he whipped around to face her again and snarled, “And why the hell would I go through all that t
orture? So that I don’t embarrass people? So that it’s easier for them to be around me?”
Every time Neha flinched at the sight of him, he was reminded of his vulnerable condition. She avoided him. Her behavior had just confirmed all of his fears. How was he going to face vicious lawyers and arrogant judges in court with a face like this? People wouldn’t take him seriously now. How could a pitiful sight like him engender respect? Could Neha live with him like this?
Zoella came over and sat opposite him on the sofa. He blinked. That was surprising. Usually people ran in the opposite direction after one of his outbursts.
Visibly gathering her courage, she said in low soothing tones, “Fardeen, you’re alive. You didn’t lose anything that you cannot get back. If that’s what you want to do. If not, who cares? You’re a brilliant lawyer. You have a family who loves you. You have friends and Neha and…”
He laughed.
“What’s funny?” she asked, with a bright little smile.
“Nothing.”
Fardeen looked away. What a little fool she was if she thought that. As if life was that kind or that uncomplicated. She probably felt obliged to talk to him because they’d sort of known each other—or at least of each other—for years now. He watched her watch him. Had she dreamed of kissing him? Girls did, didn’t they? They dreamed of their idols, happily ever after and bullshit like that. What would she do if he kissed her now? He had a sudden urge to give in to hysterical laughter. Strange thoughts, phantasmagoric and vicious occurred to him out of the blue.
Zoella was watching him for a reaction but he gave none. He couldn’t.
“Your parents, they’re suffering too you know.”
He tensed again, and replied in a caustic tone, “Oh really? Thanks for letting me know, I hadn’t noticed. Selfish bastard that I am, I was focused on my own inconsequential misery.”
“I didn’t mean…”
“What are you doing here anyway? Why’re you here all the time? Don’t you have a home, a family to go to? And who asked for your opinion? I certainly don’t remember doing so.”
A ringing silence followed. He should feel regret, Fardeen thought. But it was only a fleeting thought.
“Fardeen!” Ami’s shocked voice came from behind him. “How can you talk to Zoella like that?”
“It’s alright, Ami. Don’t worry about it. We were just talking.” Zoella tried to defend him.
She’d be miserable all her life, he thought. Nice people often were.
“Yes, Florence Nightingale here was offering her services as psychologist and life coach.”
“Fardeen,” his mother’s second warning was low. The one she used to shame people.
It had no effect whatsoever. She’d rarely had to use it on him. It had never failed before.
He laughed. It wasn’t real laughter, just a mockery of it, bitter and harsh, a parody of sorts. More and more, he found sanctuary in bitterness. The more pain he inflicted, the more he could come to terms with his own. Or that was the excuse he gave himself.
“I was just saying that maybe Fardeen should think about having plastic surgery,” Zoella explained, trying to look less guilty.
Wonderful! His mother’s favorite bone of contention.
“Zoella, you’re so right. But Fardeen has taken a stand against that sensible approach. What for is beyond me, except that it hurts him and us. It means nothing.”
“Let it go, Ami.”
He had his reasons. He had to know what he meant to Neha. Would she accept him as he was now? Broken and battered, an ugly shell of a man? Would it matter if she didn’t?
THREE
Zoella was at Swaba’s house a few weeks later when, grim and furious, Swaba demanded, “Do you know what that bitch did?”
Having heard Neha being referred to as ‘the bitch’ for the last few weeks, Zoella didn’t need to ask who it was and Swaba continued, “She broke off the engagement! My brother is still better than most men, even if he…even if…”
Too shocked to respond at first, Zoella just stared at Swaba. How could Neha have done that to him? Fardeen needed all the support he could get at this time, and the woman he’d loved for the last three years had ditched him when he needed her most?
“She isn’t a very nice person if she did this. Fardeen is better off without her.”
“But that stupid man is depressed at having been jilted by that gold digger.”
Zoella made the appropriate responses but she was thinking about the cruel ironies of life. Youth, dreams, joy, nothing lasted. Fardeen’s perfect life had gone up in smoke within minutes. Her own ordinary, nice-girl life would slide into the next predictable phase effortlessly and unremarkably.
They’d been friends forever and Swaba could tell Zoella was not all there.
“What’s with you?” she asked.
“Nothing, really nothing.”
“Spill.”
After a moment of indecision, Zoella confessed, “Ami’s said yes to Jamila Phupo’s proposal.”
Swaba was stunned. Then she choked, “You can’t marry that weasel!”
Zoella smiled sadly.
“Looks like that weasel is going to be my husband and we’ll have to stop calling him that.”
The girls were silent for some time, each thinking of the other’s troubles.
“What has Omer said, you know, about proposing?”
Swaba glowed and smiling, answered, “Soon, he said, but I told him to wait.” Her voice turned venomous again as she said, “Because of that bitch and what she did.”
Zoella sighed.
“I hope you get married first. Otherwise the wea…I mean Aurangzeb might not let me come to your wedding. You know how much he disapproves of you and our friendship.”
“What right does he have to disapprove of anything you do?”
“My mother has always listened to him and his mother. You know that. They have a say in everything.”
“For heaven’s sake Zee, why…”
Swaba stopped mid-sentence. It had almost seemed like someone was crying downstairs. Then they heard shouting. Both girls ran out of the room. Zoella’s heart sank as she saw her own family there. It was her mother crying. Zoella rushed downstairs.
“Ami, what’s wrong? What happened?”
“What happened?” her brother demanded. “You happened! What platitudes you’ve earned us, what great honors you’ve bestowed on us, you little tramp,” her brother yelled.
“Bhai, what are you saying? What has happened?” Zoella asked again.
This time, Farwa answered, her voice sounding victorious.
“I don’t blame Aurangzeb at all. Every time they come, you’re not at home. You’ve been practically living in this house. God only knows what you’ve been doing with them, what favors you’ve done for them for fancy clothes and useless treats. And now we have to pay for all that with our name and our honor.”
Zoella’s mind reeled. What was she implying? Favors? Honor?
“I don’t like your insinuations, mohtarama,” Swaba’s father said sternly.
“My wife is absolutely right. How can you deny that? Our culture and our society are not so liberal as that,” her brother interjected.
“Wh…what’s happening?” Zoella stuttered, still unable to understand what was going on.
Her brother turned towards her and said, “Aurangzeb has refused to marry you because of your behavior with these boys.”
Stunned, Zoella stared at her brother.
“M…my behavior? What? What boys?” Zoella’s confusion was augmented by her acute embarrassment.
She turned towards her mother, who continued to sob, and didn’t speak a word for or against Zoella.
“Ami? Ami? What are they saying? Why are you letting them say these things?” Zoella pleaded.
Just once, please speak for me, she wanted to shout. How could her own family do this to her?
“If you had any shame, you’d kill yourself and save us from the disgrace you�
�re bringing down upon us. I had to come all the way here in my condition. I cannot bear this stress,” Farwa added.
“This is all on you, Zoella,” said her brother.
“This is beyond ridiculous,” Fardeen’s cold voice resounded in the silence that had followed her brother’s pronouncement.
Zoella’s heart sank. Oh no. Was he a witness to this horrid display? What would he think of her? The next instant, the thought that he probably didn’t think of her at all, added to her pain.
Her brother faced Fardeen and said, “Hah! It may be ridiculous to you rich folk, but we only have our name and honor.”
“Yes, and we rich folk have none. Got it. Now get out,” Fardeen’s voice was menacing.
“Fardeen, I’ll handle this,” his father said. Then he turned towards Zoella’s brother and said, “Please, beta, sit down and tell us what happened. Zoella, make your mother comfortable too. Swaba, go tell Farooqui to get tea.”
Zoella sat down beside her mother, who moved away as if she couldn’t bear to be touched by her.
“Ami, what’s wrong? Look at me! I didn’t do anything,” Zoella sobbed.
What was happening? Why were they doing this to her? Didn’t she mean anything to her family?
Her mother was crying into her dupatta as if she were powerless, merely a bystander. That’s how she’d been all of Zoella’s life. The pain of understanding was intense. Her mother had never really loved her enough to be there for her. She still didn’t, and so wouldn’t speak up for her even now, Zoella realized.
“All they want is money, Abba,” said Fardeen. “All anyone wants is money.”
“Fardeen, please,” his father replied.
Fardeen continued. He seemed to have found a convenient vent for his frustrations. “How much do you want?” he demanded of Zoella’s brother.
