The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Page 20
SHE HURT HER LEGS, head and chest while running to the telephone. That’s a feat. What did her husband do to make her withdraw her complaint, I wonder? Maybe she and her children would be alive today if she hadn’t. I particularly love the part in which local police do a cordon-and-search operation in Jawahar Nagar of all places and then arrest and torture a serving army major’s wife. That’s peerless. In Kashmir this story would be received as slapstick comedy. The “scared doctors” bit was a good touch too. Verisimilitude is everything. As for her detailed and knowledgeable account of torture, I hope her husband only tutored her in his techniques and didn’t actually use them on her. “He was only verbally disciplining the children,” repeated three times in a single paragraph sounds dire to me.
—
Amrik Singh’s own testimony was soldier-like. Brief and to the point:
I served in the Indian Army as a commissioned officer. I was posted in various counter-insurgency and peacekeeping duties within India and abroad. In 1995 I was posted in Kashmir where insurgency is ongoing since 1990. In 1995 a human rights worker who I later came to know belonged to a banned terrorist outfit was kidnapped and killed. The Kashmir police and Indian Government is putting this blame on me. I am being made an escape goat. I had no choice but to flee from India along with my family. If I return Government of India would not like me to face any court where I can put up my view. I would be tortured by beating, shocks, waterboarding, food and sleep deprivation or else be killed and never to be seen or heard again.
The application forms were filled in by hand. Amrik Singh had neat, almost girlish handwriting and a neat, girlish signature to match. It’s eerie looking at his handwriting. It feels oddly intimate.
—
They certainly knew how to go about their business, those two. How was poor old Ralph Bauer, LCSW, to know that their story rang so true because it was true, except that the victims and the perpetrators had swapped roles? Small wonder that he came to this hilarious conclusion:
Findings:
Based on the data presented above there is no doubt in my mind that Mrs. Loveleen Singh and Mr. Amrik Singh both suffer from severe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. This degree of stress is definitely indicative of individuals that have suffered destructive and traumatic events such as torture, indefinite periods of incarceration and separation from family. They deeply fear that if they return to India these events will be repeated. There is no question that there are persons at large who still seek revenge and carry out their vendetta in various blogs of the World Wide Web.
Given these facts I highly recommend that Mr. and Mrs. Amrik Singh and their family be given protection and asylum here in the United States of America so that they can begin to lead a normal life to the extent that it is possible for them.
So they had nearly pulled it off, Mr. and Mrs. Singh. They were on the verge of becoming legal citizens of the United States. And yet, a couple of months later Amrik Singh chose to shoot himself and his whole family.
What sense did that make?
Could it have been something other than suicide?
Who was the drive-by artist that the wife mentioned in her testimony? And who were the others?
Does it matter any more?
Not to me.
Not to the Government of India.
Surely not to the California Police, who must have other things on their minds.
Shame about the wife and kids though.
—
Why does my tenant Madam S. Tilottama have this file?
And where the hell is she?
—
My phone beeps. Strange. No one has this number. As far as the world is concerned I’m in rehab. Or on study leave, which is the other way of putting it. Who’s texting me? Oh. THYROCARE, whatever that is:
Dear Client please attend our health camp. VitD+B12, Sugar, Lipid, LFT, KFT, Thyroid, Iron, CBC, Urine test for Rs 1800/-
Dear Thyrocare. I think I’d rather die.
—
I’ve already drunk a quarter of the bottle. It’s time for a forbidden afternoon snooze. Working men shouldn’t snooze. I shouldn’t take the Cardhu into the bedroom. But I must. It insists.
There’s no bed. Just a mattress on the floor. There are books, notebooks, dictionaries arranged in neat towers.
I switch on the tall standard lamp. I can see a piece of colored paper Scotch-taped to the wide-brimmed lampshade of the standard lamp. A reminder? A note to herself? It says:
As for their death, need I tell you about it? It will be, for all of them, the death of him who, when he learned of his from the jury, merely mumbled in a Rhenish accent, “I’m already way beyond that.”
Jean Genet
P.S. This lampshade is made of some kind of animal skin. If you look carefully you will find some hairs growing out of it.
Thankyou.
These rooms seem to have witnessed some sort of unraveling. The unraveling of any human being is probably horrifying to witness. But this human being? It has an edge of danger, like the faint, acrid smell of gunpowder hanging in the air at the scene of a crime.
I have not read Genet, should I have? Have you?
It’s good whisky, Cardhu. And bloody expensive. I’ll have to drink it respectfully. I’m already a bit woozy—“oozy,” as my old friend Golak would have put it. In Orissa they tend to drop their W’s.
IT’S PITCH-DARK.
I dreamed of a tower of stacked saucepan lids and open manholes stuffed with strange things—files mostly, and Musa’s drawings of horses. And long bolts of very dry snow that look like bones.
Who finished the whisky?
Who brought the vodka and the crate of beer from my car up to the apartment?
Who turned the day into night?
How many days have been turned into how many nights?
And who is at the door? I can hear the key turning.
Is it her?
—
No it’s not.
—
It’s two people with three voices. Strange. They come in and switch on the lights as though they own the place. And now we’re face-to-face. A young man in dark glasses and an older man. Older woman. Man. Woman-man. Whatever. Some sort of freak dressed in a Pathan suit and a cheap plastic anorak. Very tall. With a red mouth and a bright, shining tooth. Or maybe it’s just me still dreaming. My senses are weirdly heightened and blunted at the same time. There are bottles everywhere, crashing around our feet, rolling under the furniture and into the open manholes.
Since we don’t seem to have much to say to each other and I’m unsteady on my feet—I can feel myself swaying like corn in a cornfield—I go back into the bedroom and lie down. What else is there for me to do?
They follow me in. That strikes me as unusual behavior, even in a dream sequence, if that’s what’s going on here. The woman-man speaks to me in a voice that sounds like two voices. She speaks the most beautiful Urdu. She says her name is Anjum, that she’s a friend of Tilottama, who is living with her for the moment, and that she and her friend Saddam Hussain had come because Tilo needed some things from her cupboard. I said I was a friend of Tilo’s too and they should go right ahead and take what they needed. The young man produces a key and opens the cupboard.
A cloud of balloons floats out.
The young man produces a sack and begins to fill it. In goes—at least from what I can tell—a rubber duck, an inflatable baby’s bathtub, a large, stuffed zebra, some blankets, books and warm clothes. When they are done they thank me for my patience. They ask if I want to send a message to Tilo. I say I do.
I tear a page out of one of her notebooks and write GARSON HOBART. The letters come out much larger than I intend them to be. Like some sort of declaration. I hand the note to them.
And then they are gone.
I move to the window to watch them exit the building. One of them—the older one—gets into an autorickshaw, the other, I swear on my children, leaves on a horse. A pair of freaks with a swa
g bag full of stuffed toys trotting off into the mist on a frigging white horse.
My mind is in a shambles. My hallucinations are so pitiful. It was all so real. I could smell it. I can’t remember when I last ate. Where’s my phone? What’s the time? What day is it, or what night?
I look back at the room. The balloons are floating around like a screensaver. The cupboard doors have swung open. The inside of one is marked up. From where I’m standing it looks like a chart of some kind…a parents’ record of the height of their growing child—we used to do that with Ania and Rabia when they were growing up. What child could she have been measuring, I wonder. From up close I realize it’s not that at all. How could I have imagined, however briefly, that it would be something so domestic and endearing?
It’s some kind of dictionary, a work in progress—the entries are in uneven handwriting and in different colors:
Kashmiri-English Alphabet
A: Azadi/army/Allah/America/Attack/AK-47/Ammunition/Ambush/Aatankwadi/Armed Forces Special Powers Act/Area Domination/Al Badr/Al Mansoorian/Al Jehad/Afghan/Amarnath Yatra
B: BSF/body/blast/bullet/battalion/barbed wire/brust (burst)/border cross/booby trap/bunker/byte/begaar (forced labor)
C: Cross-border/Crossfire/camp/civilian/curfew/Crackdown/Cordon-and-Search/CRPF/Checkpost/Counter-insurgency/Ceasefire/Counter-Intelligence/Catch and Kill/Custodial Killing/Compensation/Cylinder (surrender)/Concertina wire/Collaborator
D: Disappeared/Defense Spokesman/Double Cross/Double Agent/Disturbed Areas Act/Dead body
E: Encounter/EJK (extrajudicial killing)/Ex Gratia/Embedded journalists/Elections/enforced disappearance
F: Funerals/Fidayeen/Foreign Militant/FIR (First Information Report)/Fake Encounter
G: Grenade Blast/Gunbattle/G Branch (General branch–BSF intelligence)/Graveyard/Gun culture
H: HM (Hizb-ul-Mujahideen)/HRV (human rights violations)/HRA (human rights activist)/Hartal/Harkat-ul-Mujahideen/Honeymoon/Half-widows/Half-orphans/Human shields/Healing Touch/Hideout
I: Interrogation/India/Intelligence/Insurgent/Informer/I-card/ISI/intercepts/Ikhwan/Information Warfare/IB/Indefinite Curfew
J: Jail/Jamaat/JKP/JIC (Joint Interrogation Center)/JKLF (Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front)/jihad/jannat/jahannum/Jamiat ul Mujahideen/Jaish-e-Mohammed
K: Kills/Kashmir/Kashmiriyat/Kalashnikov (see also AK)/Kilo Force/Kafir
L: Lashkar-e-Taiba/LMG/Launcher/Love letter/Lahore/Landmine
M: Mujahideen/Military/Mintree/Media/Mines/MPV (mine proof vehicle)/Militant (also Milton, Mike)/Muslim Mujahideen/Mistaken Identity/Martyrs/Mukhbir (Informer)/Misfire (Accidental death)/Muskaan (army orphanage)/Massacre/Mout/Moj
N: NGO/New Delhi/Nizam-e-Mustapha/Nabad (see also Ikhwan)/Night Patrolling/NTR (Nothing To Report)/nail parade/normalcy
O: Occupation/Ops/OGW (overground worker)/overground/official version/Operation Tiger/Operation Sadbhavana
P: Pakistan/PSA (Public Security Act)/POTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act)/Picked Up/Prima Facie/Peace/Police/Papa I, Papa II (interrogation centers)/Psyops (psychological warfare)/Pandits/Press Conference/Peace Process/Paramilitary/PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder)/Paar/press release
Q: Quran/Questioning
R: RR (Rashtriya Rifles)/Regular Army/rape/rigging/Road Opening Patrol/RDX/RAW/Renegades/RPG (rocket propelled grenade)/razor wire/referendum
S: Separatists/Surveillance/Spy/SOG/STF/Suspected/Shaheed/Shohadda (martyrs)/Sources/Security/Sadbhavana (Goodwill)/Surrender (aka cylinder)/SRO 43 (Special Relief Order-1 lakh)
T: Third Degree/Torture/Terrorist/tip-off/tourism/TADA (Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act)/threats/target/task force
U: Unidentified gunmen/unidentified body/Ultras/underground
V: violence/Victor Force/Village Defense Committee/Version (local/official/police/army)/victory
W: Warnings/wireless/waza/wazwaan
X: X gratia
Y: Yatra (Amarnath)
Z: Zulm (oppression)/Z plus Security
There’s no Musa, so who has been filling her head with this trash?
Why is she still wallowing in this old story?
Everyone’s moved on.
I thought she had too.
I’m lying on her bed.
My head is killing me.
And the room is full of balloons.
Why do I always end up like this around her?
I open the notebook I’ve torn a page out of. On the first page it says:
Dear Doctor,
Angels hover over me as I write. How can I tell them that their wings smell like the bottom of a chicken coop?
Honestly, it’s so much simpler in Kabul.
Then, as she had already died four or five times, the apartment had remained available for a drama more serious than her own death.
—JEAN GENET
8
THE TENANT
The spotted owlet on the street light ducked and bobbed with the delicacy and immaculate manners of a Japanese businessman. He had an unobstructed view through the window of the small, bare room and the odd, bare woman on the bed. She had an unobstructed view of him too. Some nights she bobbed back and said, Moshi Moshi, which was all the Japanese she knew.
Even indoors the walls radiated a bullying, unyielding heat. The slow ceiling fan stirred the scorched air, layering it with fine, cindery dust.
The room showed signs of celebration. The balloons tied to the window grille bumped into each other desultorily, softened and shriveled by the heat. In the center, on a low, painted stool, was a cake with bright strawberry icing and sugar flowers, a candle with a charred wick, a matchbox and a few used matchsticks. On the cake it said Happy Birthday Miss Jebeen. The cake had been cut, a small piece eaten. The icing had melted and dribbled on to the silver-foil-covered cardboard cake-base. Ants were making off with crumbs larger than themselves. Black ants, pink crumbs.
The baby, whose birthday and baptism ceremonies had been simultaneously celebrated and successfully concluded, was fast asleep.
Her kidnapper, who went by the name of S. Tilottama, was awake and concentrating. She could hear her hair growing. It sounded like something crumbling. A burnt thing crumbling. Coal. Toast. Moths crisped on a light bulb. She remembered reading somewhere that even after people died, their hair and nails kept growing. Like starlight, traveling through the universe long after the stars themselves had died. Like cities. Fizzy, effervescent, simulating the illusion of life while the planet they had plundered died around them.
She thought of the city at night, of cities at night. Discarded constellations of old stars, fallen from the sky, rearranged on Earth in patterns and pathways and towers. Invaded by weevils that have learned to walk upright.
A weevil-philosopher with a grave manner and a sharp mustache was teaching a class, reading aloud from a book. Admiring young weevils strained to catch each word that spilled from his wise weevil lips. “Nietzsche believed that if Pity were to become the core of ethics, misery would become contagious and happiness an object of suspicion.” The youngsters scratched away on their little notepads. “Schopenhauer on the other hand believed that Pity is and ought to be the supreme weevil virtue. But long before them, Socrates asked the key question: Why should we be moral?”
He had lost a leg in Weevil World War IV, this professor, and carried a cane. His remaining five (legs) were in excellent condition. Airbrush graffiti sprayed on the back wall of his classroom said:
Evil Weevils Always Make the Cut.
Other creatures crowded into the already-crowded classroom.
An alligator with a humanskin purse
/> A grasshopper with good intentions
A fish on a fast
A fox with a flag
A maggot with a manifesto
A neocon newt
An icon iguana
A communist cow
An owl with an alternative
A lizard on TV. Hello and welcome, you’re watching Lizard News at Nine. There’s been a blizzard on lizard island.
The baby was the beginning of something. This much the kidnapper knew. Her bones had whispered this to her that night (the said night, the concerned night, the aforementioned night, the night hereinafter referred to as “the night”) when she made her move on the pavement. And her bones were nothing if not reliable informants. The baby was Miss Jebeen returned. Returned, that is, not to her (Miss Jebeen the First was never hers), but to the world. Miss Jebeen the Second, when she was grown to be a lady, would settle accounts and square the books. Miss Jebeen would turn the tide.
There was hope yet, for the Evil Weevil World.
True, the Happy Meadow had fallen. But Miss Jebeen was come.
NAGA ASKED TILO for one good reason why she was leaving him. Did he not love her? Had he not been caring? Considerate? Generous? Understanding? Why now? After all these years? He said fourteen years was enough time for anyone to get over anything. Provided they wanted to get over it. People had been through much worse.
“Oh that,” she said. “I got over all that long ago. I’m happy and well adjusted now. Like the people of Kashmir. I’ve learned to love my country. I may even vote in the next election.”
He let that pass. He said she should think about seeing a psychiatrist.
Thinking made her throat ache. That was a good reason not to think about seeing a psychiatrist.
Naga had started wearing tweed coats and smoking cigars. Like his father did. And talking to servants in the imperious way that his mother did. Termites on toast, khadi loincloths and the Rolling Stones were a forgotten fever dream from a past life.