by Pankaj Dubey
‘Watch it . . . ass . . .’ threatened one of them, as he hemmed past them. Shivam ignored them and returned to Aaina. Nothing else mattered to him.
Murshid Mia hobbled on, going as fast as his legs could carry him. Unknown to Shivam, the man who walked away with Murshid Mia was his cousin, who had come to warn him that the gathered hooligans had just beaten up journalists waiting outside the Manas Bhawan guest house. The police, the huge state contingent posted there and at the Masjid site, had stood there like mute spectators, not protecting anyone who was attacked. ‘They’ll be coming for us next,’ the cousin confided. ‘I heard them raise slogans against us,’ he said as he went to meet one of their community leaders, who had his office nearby. They would ask for temporary shelter with him before shifting with their family to neighbouring Faizabad.
As the clamour for the temple got insistent, forcing everyone around to get moving, Shivam sat waiting. His world, unlike that of the rest, revolved around an axis called Aaina.
14
‘Shivaaaam!’
It seemed like he had been waiting for it forever and finally . . . finally, she’d called out to him.
Running his fingers through his hair nervously, the twenty-one-year-old stood outside, waiting for the curtain to be drawn, tingling with excitement.
And there she was, holding the curtain back, her burqa lying on a stool. She was still wearing the veil covering her face till the shoulders. She was standing so close to him that he went numb for a minute. He had been waiting for this moment for months and now when she was before him, he couldn’t believe it was happening, that he was actually looking at her, radiant in his work, an alluring vision in orange, so perfectly proportioned, a poem in flesh and blood. She seemed nervous herself, fiddling with her dupatta, her slim fingers with silver nail polish going around it in knots.
He was seeing her without her burqa for the first time and she was far prettier than he had imagined. He saw her slender legs snug in the gharara, her slim figure fitting perfectly into the kurti, with her long dark-brown hair down to her waist. If only she would turn around and he could see the exact length of her hair. But then he would want to touch it. It was better that she didn’t turn around.
He had been holding his breath for too long and now became completely tongue-tied.
She was braver than him and broke the silence. ‘Am I looking fine?’
He kept looking at her, fighting to find words.
‘Is it okay from the back,’ she asked and twirled around for him to see.
Such a witch, she was! She knew he was now putty in her hands and how she was enjoying it. Well, he would show her that two can play this game.
So he stepped closer, within breathing distance, and reached out to check the fitting at the waist. His hands moved up a few inches, pinching the side seam to check if it ballooned out at points and needed a tuck.
Now, it was Aaina who could not breathe, trapped in her own seduction game.
‘Perfect!’ he pronounced finally, looking into her eyes.
She looked down shyly. She was getting self-conscious and broke eye contact.
‘My kurti’s perfect,’ said Shivam, teasing her.
‘And me?’ The words were out before her mind could think it through and control what she was saying.
Shivam took a few steps back and tilted his head, acting like he was sizing her up before he could answer her.
Her eyes darkened in anger, ‘Kurti . . . kurti . . . kurti! You’re obsessed with your kurti.’
‘No.’ Drawing close to her once again, he told her softly, ‘You know who I’m obsessed with.’
‘All talk . . .’ She shook her head.
He pulled her hard to him and held her tight, right next to his beating heart.
‘Listen to this,’ he whispered to her and put her hand on his chest.
Thud thud thud. It was his heart, beating at twice, thrice, maybe ten times the normal rate. She heard its thud, as loud and fast as her own, out of control. Minutes passed. They stayed like that, mindful of nothing and no one, except each other.
The ruckus outside seeped through the curtains but did not reach their ears.
‘Show me,’ demanded Shivam, hating the net and fabric niqab separating them.
‘Lift it,’ she ordered. ‘Why should I do all the work?’
The minx! Shivam threw back his head and laughed.
It was this laugh that saved them. Babloo heard him and jumped into the shop, brushing aside the curtains of the trial room.
‘Bhaiya!’ he cried out. ‘Thank God, I found you!’
Shivam swung around, the panic in Babloo’s voice was searing. Aaina managed to disentangle herself from the embrace just in time.
‘They’ve . . . Bhaiya, they’ve demolished the masjid!’
‘What?’
Shivam froze. So did Aaina. They had not seen this coming. No one had. There was tension, yes . . . but this . . . this was too much . . . too horrific . . . Hell! All hell would break loose now.
‘Bhaiya, Mahantji is in danger,’ Babloo shrieked. ‘You got to go . . . the Muslims, they . . . ’ Babloo paused, considering Aaina’s presence, ‘they won’t spare him, everyone’s saying . . .’ A scream rent the air, drowning out the rest of his speech. There was a loud clanging of metal as something came crashing down. All three rushed up to the shop front, Shivam holding Aaina’s hand.
Vandals had taken over the streets. In hordes, they roamed about, swinging clubs and swords, chanting, pillaging. Shivam saw them loot Akram Mia’s shop and shatter the glassware on display with impunity and a recklessness that showed complete disregard for the law and the authorities. Most of the shutters were already down, the shopkeepers having fled or joined the mayhem. A group in skullcaps came around, pelting stones, ready to confront the other groups. Passers-by caught in the violence screamed and ran.
‘Back gate! There is a back gate!’ Shivam informed the other two, rummaging the drawers in the side almirah for the key. ‘Babloo, clear the machines from there, fast.’
‘We won’t make it,’ Babloo snivelled, even as he pushed the sewing machines away from the locked door to the far wall.
The commotion outside had only become louder. Shivam found the key and sprinted up to the tiny back entrance and unlocked it, his fingers trembling in fear.
‘Wait,’ he told Babloo, who was right behind him as he craned his neck to check the back lane before they hurtled out. It looked deserted. There was some pattering of feet as the odd person ran past this narrow alley, through which ran an open drain line. The three of them jumped out. Just in time. For minutes later, the shop was plundered, and everything in it, including the machines, was broken.
‘Bhaiya,’ gasped Babloo, as they raced down the alley, Shivam holding Aaina’s hand tight. ‘Bhaiya, you go to Mahantji. I’ll take her home.’
Shivam was torn. He couldn’t let her go, yet he couldn’t go with her. Not when his father and his mother needed him. Just then Aaina shook off her hand, deciding for him. She looked into his eyes, urging him to leave.
‘Babloo,’ his voice quivering, Shivam spelled it out, ‘you know she is my life.’
Babloo nodded. Shivam fished out a silver trinket from his pocket and fastened it around Aaina’s wrist. A charm bracelet. He had bought it from what was left after he sold off his cycle to buy the silk for her gharara.
And then, they were gone. Shivam took a deep breath and headed in the opposite direction.
15
That was the last time he saw her.
Again and again, he goes down that road strewn with memories . . . some happy, some painful—all indelible. Its ten years today. Ten years since he laid his eyes on this kurti.
It is past midnight but Shivam is reluctant to let go of the orange dress the driver of the silver Honda City brought to his shop for alteration. Alter! Shivam laughs at the irony. The dress has altered the course of his life . . . and it is doing the same thing yet again, today, ten years
later.
Soft, seductive and mysterious, flirting with her eyes and her words, in the way she moved, turned and giggled . . . she had killed him in this very kurti. Even with her niqab on. He smiles, remembering her earrings, silver circles that peeped through the veil every time she nodded. He keeps smiling even as sleep overcomes him. In the depths of slumber, the colours change. Orange turns black. Dark and deadly. In place of the kurti is a burqa . . . the charred remains of a burqa.
Shivam gets up with a start. Sweating. Breathing hard. The darkness of the night pales before the shadow inside him . . . the shadow of death . . . a final parting . . .
It had been a hurried goodbye in the alley that day. The . . . date was blotted in the calendars of history . . . as the domes came down. One God was robbed of his abode to make space for another God, or so everyone believed. Shivam was worse off . . . he had been robbed of his life, the reason for his existence. He remembers what Babloo recounted.
His friend had not let him down. Babloo had taken Aaina past the hooligans and the God’s keepers, escorting her safely to her home in the Muslim-dominated part of Ayodhya–Qaziana. He had managed to get her through the town roiling with riots, where everyone seemed to be baying for each other’s blood.
As he turned to go home, he fell down. A boisterous group out to attack Qaziana residents trampled over him and injured his ankle.
The air was rent with cries . . . cries of faith . . . of revenge . . . of terror. Babloo could do nothing but watch from where he lay on the street, holding on to his bruised leg, too petrified to move a muscle. Men, women and children poured out of the houses—some in kurtas, skullcaps or burqas, others having abandoned their traditional costume for fear of being marked out. They ran down the lane, screaming, praying, clutching on to their little ones and whatever else they had decided to carry with them. The rioters torched the houses. They even torched vehicles as some of them tried to flee in them. Babloo turned to stone, there was nothing he could do but watch.
Then he saw Aaina and her family scramble out of their house, the old mansion where he had left her. Fourteen-fifteen of them spilled out, her parents, brother, aunts and uncles and children. Many ran out in their billowy burqas and squeezed into the two cars waiting outside their door. He saw her get in too and heaved a sigh of relief. But he had been too soon to thank God. Within minutes, the goons surrounded the vehicles, forcing them to brake. They brought down their rods, smashing windshields and window glass. As the passengers struggled to jump out, someone chucked burning rags and set the cars ablaze.
The cars burned on. But those inside stopped struggling . . . they stopped crying. The flames had snuffed out their lives . . . the smoke turned them invisible. The attackers marched away, feeling victorious.
In a matter of minutes, it was all over. Babloo could see no more. The place emptied out soon. Those who would have mourned the dead had chosen to escape.
Leaning on the frame of a damaged hand cart, Babloo got up and hobbled off.
‘Jai Shri Ram,’ chanted Shivam, joining the supporters in their march to set things right. This was the only way he could reach the main temple safely and quickly. That’s where Babuji was, with his newfound political and activist cohorts. Also, Ma was pottering about in their house in the temple complex, waiting for him.
The next day, Shivam’s eyes welled with tears as he remembered what had unfolded the previous day.
‘Don’t,’ admonished a sadhu in loose robes and painted forehead, his hair knotted in a tail. He reached out to Shivam, who was in the seat next to him on the UP Roadways bus driving out of Ayodhya in the early hours, before the curfew started. ‘It’s a day to rejoice,’ he continued. ‘Whatever you left behind doesn’t matter. God got his space.’
Shivam rose and changed his seat to another in the front. He needed to be away from everything and everyone. His eyes closed, mind and heart bleeding with memories, the boy had left the town that had been home to him from when he had first opened his eyes in this world. Yes, he was leaving. But was there anything left to leave? He opened the newspaper in his hand to look again at the picture tucked in one corner of the local daily, of a thick-set man with a broad nose and a severe visage. The headline said:
Head Priest of the Hanuman Temple Beaten to Death
Rioters had not spared the priest’s wife either. They had killed her in cold blood.
His tears stained the paper. Shivam had not been with them when they needed him the most. Ma had told him time and again, Babuji needed him in the temple. He had not taken her seriously, insisting he did not want to be a priest. Babuji was an important figure. Shivam had failed to understand how he, a mere college dropout and an apprentice tailor, could help. With Mahantji’s high connections and the increased security ring around the temples and disputed site, he had never considered him vulnerable, not even in this vitiated atmosphere. But they had come for him. Right after those goons scaled the walls and attacked the centuries-old religious structure inside with their pickaxes, hammers, rods and shovels, the masjid defenders had come screaming, their blood boiling. When someone pointed a finger at the local man with vermilion stripes across his forehead, the head priest of the famed Hanuman temple, the surging mob had gone manic and decided to make him and his family pay . . . pay with their life. While he was away at work, mired in thoughts of his girl . . . whom he had also lost. He had run to them . . . but he had reached too late . . . he’d come to know of the attack too late . . .
The tears would not stop now.
A charred piece of black burqa was all that was left of her. Babloo took his friend to the spot where the Farooqui family had been burnt alive in their Maruti vans. ‘Bhaiya, I never wanted to do this. But . . . but,’ he blabbered, ‘I, I felt there would be no closure for you, Bhaiya . . . until you stand here . . . and see for yourself the blackness.’
How right he was. Shivam picked up the burnt burqa piece—he knew it was hers from the georgette fabric with its bead design. She had worn this special one that morning, for him probably. He rubbed the singed bit of the fabric against his face . . . feeling her one last time . . . his girl, gone . . . gone, just when she was about to show him her face. He knelt on the road, his head in his hands and wept . . . the rubble around him mourning with him. Rubble . . . that’s what his life had become. First, Ma and Babuji . . . and now, Aaina. Everyone that mattered to him reduced to nothing. All that remained for him to carry in the bus out of Ayodhya was Ma’s sewing machine. And memories—how he wished he could leave them behind too . . . but they followed . . . as did Babloo, two days later.
16
Shivam gets off the bed to start his day all over again. He hasn’t slept a wink. So much has come flooding back because he has walked the banks of his memories . . . holding the kurti, hugging it, speaking to it . . . sharing with it things he has not spoken about in a decade. All that was frozen inside, begins to thaw because the orange in his hand is not just a thing of the past, it spells a tomorrow as well. That it exists and has found its way back to him again means just one thing . . . all is not lost . . . no . . . not yet. Its return is a divine intervention. Not that Shivam likes to dwell on such things but God seems to have remembered him. Finally! Sprouting hope, renewing a promise he made to a girl ten years ago.
She was there . . . somewhere . . . somewhere near. Yes. If the kurti was there, so was she. The kurti couldn’t have survived without her. She had been wearing it when Babloo left her . . . when Babloo thought he’d seen her in that car that was set ablaze. Its return is surely a divine intervention.
Buoyed by the thought, he walks up, not to the kitchen but to the mirror instead—the cracked and dusty piece of glass that hangs above the sink in the tiny bathroom. He is in no hurry to brush his teeth. He needs to inspect his face, to check if any signs of aging lines have cropped up while he was not looking, not taking care. Suddenly it matters again how he looks. He examines his brows, his nose and lips. They look, more or less, the same, no wrinkles th
ere. Then he goes closer to the mirror, peers in and gets disconcerted—tiny lines have creeped up around his eyes, a gift of the long hours of sewing, squinting to thread the needle, poring over intricate work, straining his eyes, often in dim lighting. Well, he can’t help that . . . she will understand. But what about that youthful glow and muscular frame that set him apart from the rest of the teens in Ayodhya? That has dissipated. His skin appears tired. That lost radiance . . . she will bring it back. He smiles as he tells himself this. He decides to do away with the scruffy beard to regain his clean-shaven look of yesteryears.
His small room in Trilokpuri Basti in Mayur Vihar, where he lives alone, seems to be bursting with hope, optimism and happiness. Even the sunrays seem brighter. Shivam talks to the kurti as he sips his tea. Asks why it took so long for it to arrive . . . did it not miss his touch . . . his . . . Suddenly, he remembers something and, putting down the tea glass, he scampers up to the front door and pokes his head out.
‘Babloo . . . Babloo!’ he screams, calling out to his neighbour. ‘Babloo!’
‘Coming, Bhaiya,’ replies the familiar voice. A minute later, Babloo walks up to Shivam’s door. The tailor pulls him inside and locks it.
‘What happened, Bhaiya?’ asks Babloo, baffled and worried.
Shivam picks up the kurti, holds it proudly in front of him and looks up at his childhood friend, with expectation. His eyes twinkle, leading on the other to remember, to recognize.
Babloo stares, scratching his head, staring at his friend, and then the kurti, thinking . . . could it be . . . no, it could not . . . but it looks . . .
‘Yes, it is,’ confirms Shivam, grasping where Babloo’s thoughts are taking him.
‘Aaina?’ There, he has said it. Scared, not wanting to, but goaded by his friend, he has mouthed what is on his mind.
Shivam nods. Too overcome to say more.
Babloo blinks in disbelief, not sure what to make of it. The passing decade shows more on him than on his older friend. The one family member he had—his grandmother, died of a heart attack two days after the masjid fell. Babloo migrated to Delhi soon after, to his friend and in hope of a musical career. Over the years, he has seen Shivam disintegrate. He has also seen his own playback singing dreams fizzle into paid performances at local jagratra events. His soulful devotional renditions are in demand, but he hates the acts, viewing them as a big let-down to his ambition. Added to all this, he also bears his wife’s constant tantrums and the burden of her upkeep—she demands costly face creams and new suits every two months in the false belief that they’ll improve her looks. Even her sister stays with them. He had foolishly promised to get her married and is stuck with it. No wonder Babloo has aged more than Shivam, who seems to have lived in pause mode . . . until now.