by Manju Kapur
‘What’s the point of that?’
‘Create empathy, generate social awareness by having workshops that involve workers and students, bridge the class divide‚’ said Astha glibly, replicating that morning’s exchange with her Principal.
‘Culture-vultures‚’ snorted Hemant, ‘why don’t they do something real about the class divide, like creating jobs?’
‘Not everybody can be a factory owner.’
*
Himanshu was delighted. His face broke into a slow and gleaming smile that went straight to his mother’s heart. He was always wanting to come to his mother’s school instead of his own.
Anuradha registered her brother’s pleasure and loudly protested against the injustice being done to her.
‘Why should I spend my holidays going to your school?’ she demanded. ‘Don’t I go enough to my own?’
‘I can’t leave you here alone the whole morning. It’s not classes, it’s a drama workshop. You’ll be doing fun things.’
‘I don’t want to do fun things. Besides Papa said he was going to spend fewer hours at the factory and take us out.’
‘Well let him actually make the programme and then we will see‚’ said Astha with some irritation.
‘I won’t‚’ said Anuradha her eyes flashing, getting ready for a confrontation that would continue till collapse or victory. ‘You can’t make me. I’ll spend my holidays with Dadi upstairs.’
Himanshu looked on piously, while Anuradha waited for the next round. ‘Please beta‚’ said Astha, ‘your Dadi then complains to me that she gets tired. You have so much energy she doesn’t really know how to keep up with you. Come for a few days, if you don’t like it you needn’t continue. Promise.’
Once it was established that Anuradha was doing her mother a favour, it was easier to take her.
At first Astha did not pay much attention to Aijaz. He seemed quite capable of managing thirty-two children without her. He sat them in a circle on the stage. Do you know why people sit in a circle – so that there is no hierarchy – all of us have something to offer from backstage to front – what is the theatre about – communication – what kind? – drama – older than the written word – what did they think was the subject of drama – where did they find it …
How pedantic, thought Astha, is he giving the history of drama, are they going to do an exam, or is he going to get on with the workshop, which is why we are all here in the first place, I’m sure all the children are bored. And her mind wandered, till it came back ten minutes later to Aijaz explaining that the way man lived in society was politics and this affected everybody, literate, illiterate, powerful, powerless, poor, rich. He read out sections of the newspaper and asked how they would translate what was happening into drama for people who couldn’t read? For example what would they do with the Babri Masjid-Ram Janambhoomi controversy?
The spot where Ram was born thousands of years ago some say is the exact spot where a masjid stands today. Is this fact or faith? If it is faith, is it sacrosanct? Are there ways in which faith can be motivated and played upon by political forces …
His voice faded, and Astha’s mind turned to the religion consumed at home on one of her husband’s TVs. Ever since the Ramayan was serialised, viewing it had become a ritual, insisted upon by the grandparents, strongly supported by Hemant.
And so, every Sunday morning, the family gathered upstairs before a ClearVision TV, twenty-inch screen, manufactured by the son of the house, and watched the story of the Ramayan. Week after week they agreed, this was the golden age of India, this is our noble heritage, now thoroughly debased, when justice flourished, when Hindus had pride, when a king showed responsibility towards his people, when duty, honour, devotion, truth and loyalty had a place in Ram Rajya. And today the birthplace of this king, our Lord, is occupied by a mosque, the shame of it, dismissing as nonsense the protest that it was not possible to really place the exact spot of a man’s birthplace so many thousands of years ago.
Suddenly Astha saw the long arm of history twisted and refracted, till it popped out of a TV box, took them to Ayodhya and planted them on Ram Kot in front of the Babri Masjid.
She was sitting at the back of the stage, her arms around her knees, thinking all this, when she looked up and saw Aijaz looking at her. Uncertainly she smiled. ‘What do you think, Astha?’ he asked.
How had he found out her name? And from being indifferent to Aijaz, the single use of her name, created a pleasure in what she, unused to the ways of men outside marriage, saw as interest rather than a communication strategy.
‘Do you think you can write the script?’ he went on.
‘Um‚’ Astha hesitated, ‘I don’t know anything about the Babri Masjid.’
Aijaz leaned towards her and said, ‘Just a working script. Your daughter has volunteered your name. She says you write.’
‘I am not really a writer, just a few poems‚’ said Astha surprised, her eyes on her daughter’s back, with the hair curling down the white shirt.
Aijaz was used to persuading people. ‘Just a simple working script which we can improvise on, Astha.’
He was focusing on her. She blushed.
Himanshu frowned. Was his mother being forced to do something unpleasant, but no, she was agreeing, she was participating in extra-curricular activities, doing the bit that wasn’t necessary, volunteering despite her uncertainty about her capacities, because everything was worth trying.
Aijaz smiled, showing his even pearly teeth. Why does he smile like that, he knows he is charming, thought the newly appointed writer of scripts.
*
Going back in the scooter, Astha thought of the India International Centre, where her parents-in-law were members, and the library that only she was interested enough to use. There was bound to be something on the Babri Masjid there. As if reading her thoughts, Himanshu piped up, ‘I’ll help you, Mama.’
Anuradha snorted. ‘You? You are so stupid. What can you do? Do you even know what the Babri Masjid is? Do you know where it is?’
Himanshu turned around and hit Anuradha in the stomach. Anuradha hit him back twice as hard, then once on the back for good measure. Astha slapped Anuradha’s hand. Anuradha glared at her mother. Himanshu began to cry. Just then the scooter took a wrong turn inside the colony, and in the middle of shouting at her children, Astha had to break off and redirect the scooter wallah through the maze of Vasant Vihar. He insisted on charging ten rupees more, and that was the end of their first morning at the theatre workshop.
*
Later Astha had a talk with Anuradha. ‘We are going to be together for fifteen days,’ she said. ‘And in that time I forbid you to call your brother stupid.’
Anuradha looked cunning. ‘And after that?’
‘Even after that. You can’t go on calling someone stupid. It hurts their feelings.’
‘But he is.’
‘Even if he is.’
Anuradha looked victorious. ‘See, you also think so.’
Astha stared at her daughter, ‘Anu, what’s the matter with you? Four years younger, what comparison can there be?’
‘You are always taking his side.’
Why was it, thought Astha wearily, that love always had to be balanced by its opposite? She had a secret tenderness for Himanshu that her daughter targeted unerringly, battering her mother, shouting out her dislike, making even the love and hate in the world. She looked at Anuradha’s contorted face, and angry eyes, and cajoled, ‘I need help in writing a script. Himanshu can’t help me.’
Anuradha looked wary. ‘Don’t try and flatter me‚’ she said.
‘You mean what I’m saying is not true?’
For a moment Anuradha was out-manoeuvred.
‘So, it’ll have to be you‚’ continued Astha.
‘When do we start?’
‘This evening. We’ll go to the library and get some facts first.’
‘And leave Himanshu behind.’
‘Absolutely. I’l
l send him upstairs.’
*
That evening Astha and Anuradha made for the library. As Anuradha looked at magazines, Astha quickly browsed through the books in the history section. There seemed to be no end of fuss around this mosque. Had there been a temple on this site, claimed to be the birthplace of Lord Ram? Had Babur ordered this temple destroyed? Had he compounded the arrogance of conquest by building a mosque bearing his name using materials from the temple? Zealous historians, pursuing evidence and rationality had gone into its structure, pillars, stones, inscriptions, had investigated Babur’s diary, his religious and building habits, had cited examples of British divisive policies, but nothing had been able to quiet the controversy.
Astha stared at the picture of the Babri Masjid. What was it about this monument that had created so much bloodshed and fighting over two centuries? It was not even remarkable, squat and three domed, surrounded by trees. How could she effectively present its history, long and tortured, in a manner that was simple without distorting?
Over the weekend as she read through books and photo-copies she had made in the library, she thought that controversies need places, disputes need sites, not the other way around, and the Babri Masjid was one of them. Babri Masjid-Ram Janambhoomi. The amount of blood, hate, and passion for ownership these words evoked bathed each stone with a corrosive mixture, slashing through the surface so that it was no longer an old mosque. It was a temple, a birthplace, a monument to past glory, anything but a disused nesting place for bats. Despite all this it had endured for over four hundred years.
It was too much to handle as a play. She felt like giving up, but the thought of not having anything to show Aijaz drove her on. She gripped her pen, took a deep breath, and plunged.
She was still plunging when Hemant returned from the Sunday tea spent upstairs with his parents, bonding over business and politics.
‘Back already?’ she asked.
‘It’s been two hours‚’ he replied.
‘Oh, I hadn’t realised. This whole thing is very complicated‚’ said Astha.
‘People make it so‚’ replied the husband. ‘Otherwise what is there in an abandoned mosque? The government is too bloody soft on these Muslims, that is the problem.’
‘Surely that is not the issue. Power seekers – on both sides – use religion quite blatantly. How can beliefs about god be compatible with violence?’
‘You don’t know their religion.’
‘As though ours is so much better. Ram would have hated what was going on in his name – a man who sacrificed everything to keep his father’s honour, who left his home, his palace, his kingdom in order to make sure his brother inherited, he would be the last to appreciate the fuss over his birthplace.’
‘Times have changed. We are preserving his honour as it needs to be done now.’
Astha stared at her husband. Was he agreeing that people should be killed in the name of God? She didn’t want to know what he thought.
‘Wasn’t Aijaz going to write this play‚’ continued Hemant. ‘Didn’t you tell me he was a history teacher? Surely this is his area of expertise, not yours. How have you got so involved?’
‘He wants everybody to participate‚’ said Astha thinking quickly. ‘Besides you forget I am the teacher volunteer.’
‘Volunteer, not donkey.’
‘Translating history into theatre is hardly work a donkey can do.’
‘Nor can you. What is your experience?’
‘I don’t need experience.’ She felt she was being denied something, not understood, throttled, and choked. And yet it was just a play. He was right, she had no experience. Though Aijaz was in a better position to write about masjids and controversies, still she would hold her own, paltry though that own might be. ‘Aijaz doesn’t think experience is necessary‚’ she went on in defence.
‘Oh pardon me‚’ he said, and his wife hated the mockery in his tone, ‘he clearly knows how to get work out of you.’
*
‘Can I speak to you a moment?’ Astha asked Aijaz on Monday during the fifteen-minute break he allowed the kids.
‘Trouble with the masjid?’ he smiled.
Astha nodded briefly.
‘Shall we go to the canteen?’
*
In the canteen she opened her bag and took out flurries of photostats. ‘I don’t know where to begin‚’ she started. ‘It’s such a tangled history, and leaving one piece out makes it lopsided. Besides it is used for many different political purposes in the present as well.’ This Astha had only realised yesterday. So far the Babri Masjid had been something mentioned in the news with the irritating air of a problem that wouldn’t go away. ‘I do wish you would write it, or conceive it. I am sure you are far more knowledgeable.’
Aijaz looked at her clutching her photostats. ‘Do you think it is only the so-called experts that should be allowed to deliver opinions? You are looking at it from the outside. Your perspective is fresh, it is invaluable.’
‘But I am very ignorant and I cannot possibly do it justice‚’ she said, quick as a flash putting herself down.
‘It doesn’t matter, Astha‚’ he said. His voice was coming at her, his eyes were looking at her, any second and his teeth would glow at her. She was married, she should not be registering these things. She shifted uneasily on the hard canteen bench, clutching her bag in her lap. ‘The thing is‚’ he went on, ‘we have to create awareness. There may be differences of interpretation, it doesn’t matter. If our players and our audience think for one moment about this issue, we have done our job.’
‘You have already created awareness in one‚’ she mumbled daringly.
‘And you will create it in many.’
‘I don’t know‚’ she replied, ‘I have no experience.’
The smile, the teeth, the hand that lightly touched the phototstats. ‘What is all this?’
‘Material I gathered. I sketched out a few ideas, though I am not sure—’
‘Let’s see‚’ he interrupted, leaning forward. She could smell him, a faint sharp smell. She shifted uneasily again, clutching her bag still more firmly to her stomach, riffling through her papers.
‘I thought of starting in 1528, you know when Mir Baqi decrees that a mosque be built at the highest point in Ayodhya in the name of his most noble ruler Emperor Babur, a brief two-line scene. We could have a boy with a placard announcing dates and locations. Perhaps the same boy could double as the mosque, a mosque that just wants to be left alone thinking each fight will be the last.’
‘Himanshu would be good for the part. He is the youngest.’
Her own thoughts exactly. She looked up and smiled, he smiled back, she quickly looked down, he must think she found her paunch fascinating, she looked at it so much. ‘Do go on‚’ he said after a moment’s silence.
‘Then a short scene set in 1855. The Muslims think the Ayodhya ruler is showing favours to the Hindus. They claim that the temple at Hanuman Garhi is built on a mosque, they march towards it, the Hindus retaliate by saying the Babri Masjid is built on a temple and they march upon it—’ she paused. ‘Actually there was more but I have pared it down to the essentials, everybody thinking they have been done in, and asserting their power through temples and mosques.’ She looked at Aijaz anxiously. ‘I hope I have got it right?’
‘Absolutely. Then?’
‘A lot of people were killed during this time, Hindus as well as Muslims, and the whole thing became openly political. There was an enquiry committee consisting of Hindus and Muslims, presided over by the British Resident. But after 1857 power equations changed, and two years later, the British declared that access to the Babri Masjid would be bifurcated. The Hindus were to enter from the east, and the Muslims from the north.’
‘Then?’
‘This state continues till the British leave. Then in 1949, some idols appear. The Hindus claim this is a miracle, while the constable on duty states that about fifty to sixty people broke into the masjid
on the night of December 22. The next day the District Magistrate declared the area disturbed and locks are put on the masjid. At this point I stopped.’
‘You haven’t written more?’ Aijaz sounded disappointed.
‘Well last February the district court ordered the locks open. Rajiv Gandhi is probably involved, but I don’t know how far to go in showing the masjid as a tool in modern political equations‚’ said Astha, pleased at his tone.
‘We’ll work something out.’
Aijaz took out his wallet, while Astha groped around for change. ‘If you don’t let me pay for one sweet and overcooked cup of tea I’ll be very upset‚’ said Aijaz as they rose to go.
*
The appreciation that Aijaz had shown moved Astha so much she couldn’t help talking about it at dinner.
‘Aijaz liked the script‚’ she started.
‘He told us it was a wonderful script‚’ put in Himanshu ‘but we could change it any way we wanted because we are to bring our own – own – what, Mama?’
‘Interpretations.’
‘Yes that – to our parts. And I’m to be the mosque and carry placards. I have to keep crying and getting hit. Everybody wants me.’
His parents looked at him indulgently. ‘Really beta?’ said Hemant. ‘I must come and see you.’
‘Yes, Papa. We are going to do it the last day of the holidays. All our families and friends should come, Aijaz said.’
‘Aijaz Uncle‚’ corrected the father. ‘He is older than you.’
‘No Papa, Aijaz does not believe in hi – hi—’ He looked at his mother again.
‘Hierarchy.’
‘The girls in Mama’s school don’t call him anything‚’ said Anuradha. ‘They are so shy, can you imagine? It is a very good thing that Himanshu and I go, otherwise poor Aijaz would have a hard time with them.’
‘Anu‚’ reproved Astha, ‘they are not that bad.’
‘Oh, Mama, you don’t know.’
Only later did Astha realise that Hemant had not actually said anything about her script. Well, it didn’t matter, he would see the play performed, and recognise his wife’s hidden talents. At night, lying in bed, she drifted off to sleep with thoughts of Aijaz and the days ahead.