29/6/15
It was difficult to find Niyaz’s address, and even more difficult to convince him to see us. We met Amandeep Singh, who has been fired from his job. In just one meeting, he seemed to be emerging as the hero. He has no objections to the fact that we are using his name and the acts he was involved in for our play.
Anuradha’s family refused to see us. Kushalpal talked to them. They have said they will speak over the phone, whatever the case.
May god save Anuradha from this limbo between life and death!
This play will have a dedication at the beginning. All characters will stand together and commemorate Anuradha as one.
What should the title be?
The soggy pages were virtually unreadable. Water had seeped in so deep that one could not pick out a single dry page amid all the wet pages whose letters had run off. Finally, I found three pages that were relatively drier, although the moisture had left them fragile. They began to tear at my touch:
15/4/15
Ratnashankar Guru-ji has become an expert in the art of insulting. The entire city now knows that he doesn’t like me. What is perhaps not known is that I don’t respect him either. If I did respect him, it would have been impossible to endure this humiliation. It must have been a light moment when I asked him why he needed to use his tongue so much if an armed guard walked with him? Today too he acted in a regrettable manner. Shiksha Sadan is a fair distance away from the cycle stand. The ground is bigger than a stadium, and crossing it has its own charm. When a hot wind blows, for instance, just before noon, I’m always reminded of a scene from a film. Antonio Banderas is crossing a big town square. He is soaked, and naked from above the waist, with a chest as broad as a desert, and drops trickling down his pants in time with his steps. A truck halts as if to salute Banderas’s beauty, as if the driver wants to learn something from his gait. I don’t remember anything else after this scene, not even the name of the movie, whether it was Desperado or Once Upon a Time in Mexico. But this scene comes to mind whenever I see somebody crossing this ground by themselves. I hope, one day, to make Kushalpal walk across the ground in exactly the same manner while I shoot a video. But today, as I was about to get to my bicycle, I heard someone call out to me with their mouth full of paan. I turned around and saw Ratnashankar Guru-ji standing in his veranda, along with his guard and a few students. His students don’t even greet me in his presence, but at least they treat me with a modicum of respect when he is not around. He gestured at me to come to the veranda. I crossed the ground again. But by the time I reached him, he got busy on a call and strolled away. I waited for him along with his students. He returned after forty minutes. The first thing he asked me was, ‘Why are you here?’ I was not surprised. His students laughed over his behaviour, or perhaps they were just pretending to be amused, it wasn’t clear. I said, ‘Guru-ji, you called me yourself.’ With both disgust and pity in his voice, he responded, ‘Why would I call you? You must have misunderstood. Okay, go on now.’ Then he joined his students in their banter. I could have responded to him. But what was more important, more than whether or not to respond, was how sensible it would be for me to engage with this pig. I stood there thinking about this when he turned again and asked me, ‘Do you have something to say?’ I shook my head. ‘What could I have to say to you, Guru-ji?’ I said and walked away. These frequent insults are becoming unbearable, but who can I talk to about this? It’s good that with time, I have lost all respect for most senior teachers, otherwise they would have turned my life into hell.
We often err in understanding whether it is some divine power that begets violence, or if it’s something only us humans do.
17/5/15
The R.K. Agency folks got us to perform a play for the seed company, but when will they pay us? It was the same old story about a rich farmer versus a poor farmer. Those who used the seeds of that company prospered. I tried to change the characters’ names, but the agency was stuck on ‘Sukhi Ram’ and ‘Dukhi Ram’. They have blocked the payment for several months now. I have to see them tomorrow on my way to the college. The company is owned by people related to an influential man like Dadda, but they behave like petty thieves. They have even stopped paying for minor jobs.
All of Anasuya’s reports are positive. She is three months along. She thinks it’s a boy. I think it’s our love.
13/4/15
Have to prepare two of Jon Fosse’s plays during the upcoming summer vacation. Kushal, Mukesh and Janaki like Fosse’s Girl on the Sofa. It has plenty of scope for direction. I have to refrain from exercising my veto this time. The play will be selected by the students, but Jagdish and I want to perform Melancholia. Let’s see what drama takes place over these two dramas in tomorrow evening’s meeting.
My mood turned sour after reading the first few pages. Have those who invented ad-hocism ever paid attention to the appalling conditions of contractual teachers? I was also surprised to learn that despite being on a contract, Rafique had dedicated himself to theatre. This was quite an achievement. It must have taken a lot out of him, to stand tall amid all the hassles, with the desire to do something worthwhile, to cherish the beautiful aspects of life.
But the last entry amazed me. Despite living in a mofussil town like Noma and working as a contractual teacher, Rafique had not only been reading Jon Fosse’s works, but also performing them with his students without any fuss.
I wanted to meet Rafique even more now, so that I could see what a genuinely focussed and dedicated individual looked like. Rafique seemed to have appeared as if by magic, at this specific moment when he needed me, as an answer to the unresolved questions of my own life. Or at least that was what it felt like to me.
When I found it impossible to turn to any other page without tearing it, I decided to spread them out and dry every single page from his diary.
I started from the wooden cupboard. Its bottom shelf was the biggest among its three shelves, but it could only accommodate six pages at a time. I managed to dry around twenty pages there. A letter or two, or a few words flashed before my eyes in this process, but I needed to read them in their entirety. I grew restless. I needed more surfaces to spread the pages on.
There were four hangers on the uppermost shelf of the cupboard; my clothes hung from two. I put my clothes on the bed and hung three pages each, one beside the other, on the four hangers. The fan caused some of the pages to flutter – not like feathers, but in their own way, just the way sheets of paper flutter in the wind. This meant that some of the pages had begun drying or had dried already.
Repeating the pattern, I spread the pages of the diary and the notebook on the floor, up to the basin in the washroom. A lot of pages were still left, so I spread them over the bed, leaving me just enough space to sleep. I put pages in sets of two, that is, one over the other on the bed. But there were far too many of them. So, I tied one end of a shirt and a pair of trousers to the window and the other end to the bedpost, turning them into a rope to hang the remaining pages to dry.
The entire room was now filled with letters, words, sentences, their meanings, and above all, with the possibility of Rafique being alive. Or not. This tiring exercise had taken me almost three-quarters of an hour, so I too lay down on the bed as soon as I had finished.
Lying down among these words, I began to feel as if I was a word myself. The thought that I myself could be one among the many words in which I had been trying to find the possibilities that led to Rafique’s disappearance terrified me. Missing, lost, disappeared – it could be any one of these, but it wasn’t. My mind was not ready to assign these adjectives to Rafique either. There are so many lookout notices one sees about missing people, but before this day, I had never ever realized how inhuman it was to ascribe these adjectives to human beings. These cold words used to describe objects sound grotesque when used for human beings. I could understand this, but at the same time, I could not. To keep human dignity intact, it would be best to say ‘Rafique has not come back home yet’
. A star of hope resides in this line, one that has not yet risen but we know it’s there. People should have the freedom to return home whenever they want. There also needs to be a home to return to – even if it is only in the eyes of a wife or in a couple’s desires. With the comforting thought that Rafique at least had people and a home to come back to, sleep encircled me from all sides.
WHEN THE BOY FROM THE reception pressed the doorbell, I feared someone would barge in and see the pages scattered across the room. I got ready and came downstairs, not paying attention to who had come to pick me up. It was Shalabh Shrinet himself. To be honest, my disdain for the police diminished a little because of his act. The jeep had a driver, but Shalabh gestured to him to come using some other means of transport. He made me sit in the front and began to drive himself. By now I was drenched in his largesse, so I could only ask, ‘Hope I didn’t keep you waiting long?’
I was mostly quiet from then onwards, as Shalabh took over the conversation. Many notable people of the town would be attending the function that evening, he said. ‘The preparations for the Dol Mela are ongoing. You may want to meet a few people from the organizing committee.’ He probably thought I didn’t know about the festival, so he explained in detail. ‘The Dol Mela takes place here on the day of Janmashtami. The tradition started in 1918 and has been going on uninterrupted since then. Thousands of people attend the fair. A music festival also takes place. The great flautist Hariprasad Chaurasia has been invited this time.’ He continued with a chuckle, ‘There will be wrestling as well – both physical and political. I would say, stay on for three more days. See this amazing spectacle of folk culture before you leave. This will be my first time too.’
Then suddenly, he changed the topic and said, ‘Had I acted in the movies, things would have been very different today.’
I listened to him, and said ‘hmm’ or laughed at the right times. It began to dawn on me that I had heard of the Dol Mela earlier too.
He had a palatial house. My first reaction was, ‘This is yours!’ Perhaps he wanted to hear more compliments, so he said with a hint of embarrassment, ‘All because of the blessings of people like you.’ The lawn seemed like it could be a golf course. The grass was so soft and flat, as if a film heroine had laid down on it and just gotten up. The languid lamps created an atmosphere of twilight and solitude.
Shalabh asked me to wait in the lawn and went inside, emerging after some time with his wife. She introduced herself as Sunita. One could guess his age by looking at her, and I felt that prosperity had definitely enhanced her attractiveness.
They were amazing hosts. They had both come out only to invite me inside together. The furniture was so white it dazzled the eye. The other guests were already there. Usually, I cannot remember names at the first meeting, but in this case, they came attached with big designations, so they stuck with me: Shriramraghav Singh, chairman of the municipal council; Surendra Pratap Malviya, retired as a gazetted officer, a chemical products scientist, and now running BL(D)U.
‘BL(D)U is his dream,’ Shalabh said. Here, Malviya-ji interrupted, ‘Not just mine. BL(D)U is a dream for all of us. It’s a matter of pride for all Noma residents, isn’t it?’
A gentleman who sat there thought this introduction was insufficient, so taking matters into his own hands, he added, ‘And Dadda is the pride of our town.’
I offered a namaskar to him, and then to everyone. That these folks were the VIPs of this town was apparent not just from their introductions, but from their expressions and manner as well. A tiny hope sprung up in a corner of my mind: Could they perhaps help us in finding Rafique? Big things can often be accomplished with help from unknown quarters after all.
As the introductions went on, Shalabh presented me to everybody as if I were a trophy. The first was Ramjanam Tiwari. ‘He lives in London and works as an officer in a very big company.’ (Ramjanam told me later that it was Deutsche Bank.) ‘He left Noma in 1980 but comes back every year with his family on Janmashtami for the Dol Mela.’ Ramjanam’s face started to glow by the time Shalabh finished. I felt he would start humming the patriotic song ‘Kar chale hum fida’ if someone gave him the slightest encouragement. But nobody did. Shalabh pointed towards the front yard; I couldn’t see clearly, but a woman’s figure was moving about in the darkness. I was told it was Tiwari-ji’s daughter, who worked as a musician at a Yorkshire music academy.
The introductions came to a pause. Surendra Pratap Malviya and Shriramraghav Singh welcomed me formally by placing a shawl around my neck. Ramjanam Tiwari held my hand. He seemed to be perpetually cheerful by nature. With a wide grin on his face he said, ‘We will felicitate you in a grand way – “vyapak samman” – at Dadda’s premises day after tomorrow.’ Everybody applauded. He laughed after saying ‘vyapak’, looking to the others as if to confirm that he had pronounced the word correctly. Then, settling the matter himself, he said, ‘How can I forget Hindi even after becoming an Englishman!’
There were around ten or eleven businessmen who were all involved in some kind of enterprise in town. I wanted to commit to memory all their names, since each held some post in the Mela Committee or in the Mangal Morcha. And there were several who held positions in both. But I couldn’t memorize their names just yet, because two most interesting personalities introduced themselves at the same time: Pramod Gupta, who ran a medical store and was the local correspondent for the Dainik Jagriti. When I would go to his store later, I’d be greeted by a box labelled ‘Your News’. But for now, he introduced himself by reciting a poem.
As if that wasn’t enough, Suryabali Upadhyay also introduced himself with a poem. He was the local correspondent for a newspaper called the Dainik Surya and ran a coal business. His collection of poetry, Yeh Sansar Kagaz ki Pudiya, was to be brought out by a Ghaziabad-based publisher. He told me that eight years before I came to town, Kavi Mahesh had come to Noma and recited his poetry at BL(D)U.
The introductions went on. After listening to everybody, one thing became clear: all of them were in love with themselves. They had several achievements to boast of, but all of them looked restless. It was a relief to get done with them, but then I had to listen to my own introduction. A young man called Amit Jain, who owned a sawmill, ran a school and was the treasurer of the Mangal Morcha, read it out. I felt as if he was talking about someone else. I had forgotten all the things that were being said about me.
While I waited for the introductions to end, a man appeared from nowhere with a bottle of Glenfiddich. But not many people were drinking. It was just me, Shalabh, who sought his wife’s permission in an exaggerated manner before touching his glass, and Amit Garg, who came from a family of goldsmiths and had returned to manage the business after studying engineering in Australia.
I was annoyed. I was being made to feel as if I was the only one craving alcohol, that it had been brought out only for my sake, while the rest believed drinking to be sacrilege. The situation would have continued to deteriorate, had that figure from the yard not entered the room. She rolled her lips to toss a silent hello at me, sank into a sofa, and said, ‘Constable, one for me too.’ The word ‘constable’ grabbed my attention. I tried to see if it was one of the policemen present at the station this morning.
But it was the woman whom my eye was drawn to more. Her cotton leggings tightly wrapped themselves around her thighs. The drawstring was knotted around her waist like a flower. Her top was the colour of fresh butter, and open from the sides. When she moved around, one could get a glimpse of a crochet bra. She wore an Apple smartwatch on her left hand, and held the glass with two fingers and the thumb of her right, all the while immersed in her phone.
This reminded me that I had not looked at my phone for a while. There were several notifications, but I tapped my message inbox first. There were two texts:
‘What’s up, my lord? When should I book the return ticket for?’
‘Where are you? I’ve made urad dal for dinner.’
You forget your own habits, yo
u forget the memories that emerge from those habits – but those who remember your habits remember those memories too.
There were also seven missed calls. One was from Anasuya and another from Archana. Five missed calls were from an unknown number. Looking closely, I saw that all five calls were made within a span of five to seven minutes. Truecaller could not tell me anything.
The clock struck ten, but everybody in the gathering continued to drink. It was just the four of us when we began, but by 9 p.m., seven more had joined us, each one supposedly doing so to give me company.
Everyone sat in one group at the start, but after a while, smaller groups were formed. Surrounded by four others, Amit Garg narrated an incident from his student days. Shalabh whispered in my ears, ‘He’s really laying it on thick.’
Most people surrounded Malviya-ji, or Dadda, which is how he was commonly addressed. He had set a discussion in motion about the importance of image. Thinking I was not participating in the conversation, he pulled me in by asking, ‘What do you think about the importance of image in literature?’
‘If you’re talking about brand image, it is important to create a beautiful image for characters, since it has consequences in the real world,’ I answered as per my understanding. ‘But if you mean image in myth or fiction, then as a writer, I don’t think it is important at all. Especially not in Hindi.’
Dadda acknowledged my words politely and said he was out of touch with contemporary literature. Then he narrated an anecdote: ‘When a knowledgeable person once went to Nirala to ask who the greatest Hindi poet of the day was, Nirala replied, “Funny that you should put this question to the greatest Hindi poet himself!”’
‘Nobody knows whether this happened or not,’ I countered with a laugh. ‘And then, even if Nirala did say so, it was reality and not just an image.’
‘Can there be a difference between reality and an image?’
‘Image or myth comes into use as a word or expression only when there is a difference. Generally, they are different. An image has to be constructed.’
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