Vanity Bagh

by Anees Salim

  ‘… 2100 books per month.’

  Applause from everyone, except the one who earlier had a false start.

  ‘I repeat, 2100 books a month. In certain months it is much more than that.’

  All of a sudden I felt overworked as a louder round of applause erupted in the room. Two inmates, who had been raking the earth around the banyan tree that had extended a helping hand to Zia and shoved him over the wall to the free world, stopped working and tilted their heads towards the sound of the applause. Then they came over to investigate, to see if what they had heard was the first sign of a prison revolt and they could be of any help to the winning side. Standing at a window they peered in, their faces lit up with smiles of expectation. The superintendent stopped talking, and his American-president composure once again degenerated into the antics of a despotic Arab.

  Those who do not love me do not deserve to live.

  – Colonel Gaddafi(1942-2011)

  His face set with a what-the-fuck-is-happening-in-thisjail expression, the superintendent sized up his cortege, every member of which shuffled briskly in their boots, but it was the head warden who dashed to the door and, grabbing a wooden scale from a table on his way out, skirted the room on tiptoe like that nameless biped in Walt Disney cartoons. Then he was standing at the window behind the inquisitive inmates who were still trying to tune their eyes to the half-dark interior. We saw the scale rise in the air and fall, and one inmate jump up in the air and scamper away. The other deftly dodged the blow and sprinted towards the banyan tree, where he gathered a hoe in the run and started digging a hole in the earth without delay.

  The entire Book Room was left in stitches for some time.

  A day without laughter is a day wasted.

  – Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)

  With a hand in the air, the superintendent requested silence. Compressing our lips, we complied.

  ‘Now let me get on to the real matter. We have been using the same cover for our notebooks for the last ten years or so. And we have decided to change it.’

  No one but I clapped.

  ‘Nothing wrong with the old cover. But I am no expert to judge art. Nor am I an artist myself. But last month the principal of St Peter’s, whose store buys about 40 per cent of the books we produce, said they were looking for a little more imaginative book covers. The reason being there are hardly any repeat sales after the first purchase, which school rules insist should be done only at the school store. They have identified, after a little research, the reason for the drop in sales to be the cover design. They are a bit serious. And who wants to have serious stuff these days.’

  Someone yawned. But it had nothing to do with the superintendent’s discourse. This particular person yawned every afternoon around this time.

  ‘So the school has asked us to go a little imaginative on the cover. Something that would induce repeated purchase among its students. Our first idea was to run a competition among our inmates. The Best Cover Competition. Then I was told that we have a budding artist amongst ourselves.’

  Everyone was looking at me. Or I imagined everyone was looking at me.

  ‘I have always believed in giving opportunities to people. People who are unfortunate enough to live in prison and government servants who are fortunate enough to work with the jail department. Equal opportunities to everyone. No discrimination.’

  If Zia was still around and had he been in one of his foulest moods, he might have quizzed the superintendent as to whether he could go home every evening like the wardens did.

  ‘So last Sunday I had a chat with the principal and bounced off an idea that sounded very interesting to me. Father Isaac, who is very hard to please, loved it.’

  Everyone applauded the idea that the hard-to-please Father Isaac loved.

  ‘It is my pleasure to introduce you to this talented artist.’

  Everyone was smiling at me. Or I imagined everyone was preparing themselves to smile madly at me.

  ‘But before I introduce you to the creator, let me introduce you to his creation.’ He whipped out two sheets from the sheaf and held them up like the pictures of a fugitive. ‘They are not just notebook designs. They are tiny playfields.’

  Everyone applauded the little playfields. The superintendent asked the sheets to be passed around the room. They had been impressively executed, what with the dual-toned grass turf and representative galleries skirting the pitch. I stole a glance at the friendly-looking warden. He cocked his head slightly to a side and winked at me almost imperceptibly, which equalled a thumbs-up sign given the fact that his superiors were around. The computer print-outs completed one full cycle and the superintendent was holding them again.

  ‘Now, let me present to you the brain behind this little but very significant idea which will increase the Book Room output to nothing less than 2500 per month.’

  I coloured the way I had not coloured since the imam caught me polishing my dick with his hair oil. I allowed myself a half-smile and lowered my eyes to my feet.

  ‘And here is that little designer.’

  I looked up at the superintendent with a smile of gratitude and found him standing with a hand on the friendly-looking warden’s shoulder. ‘He has been recommended for a double increment and will receive a certificate of merit from IG, Prisons.’

  Everyone applauded the son of a bitch, who was now seeking the superintendent’s permission to say a few words of gratitude. The permission to deliver as many words of praise as he could in two minutes was granted by the deputy superintendent.

  ‘My 1001 thanks to Joseph sir. Joseph sir has always believed in giving opportunities to people. People who are unfortunate enough to live in prison and government servants who are fortunate enough to work with the jail department. Equal opportunities to everyone. No discrimination. Thank you.’

  The head warden and the deputy superintendent exchanged glances, as if asking each other: Haven’t we actually heard this before? Or is this just déjà vu stuff?

  ‘One more thing. I dedicate these cover designs to Joseph sir who is retiring next week. Please accept this, Joseph sir. Thank you.’

  Exactly a week later, a small convoy of government vehicles with red boards on their grilles rolled in through the prison gates, bringing the top brass of the jail department to bid farewell to the superintendent with bouquets and garlands. Decorations from the Independence Day celebrations had been dusted and hung around the Record Room like bitter memories. And the prison, once again, bore a close resemblance to my school. The prison officials, like teachers, strolled in and out of the Record Room carrying savouries on paper plates and tea in plastic cups; the superintendent, equalling the outgoing headmaster, looked dolefully out of the window; and the inmates, like students, were left alone to sit under trees or wander around buildings. At the back of the Record Room I spotted a stocky man with a camera slung around his neck, his hands laden with refreshments, his cheeks distended with a samosa. His eyes, shaded by the visor of a Nikon cap, lingered on me for a while before he relieved his hands of the paper plate and plastic cup and plodded across the wet mould that stretched under many trees like a designer rug. But not until he took off his cap did I recognize my old neighbour from Vanity Bagh.

  ‘Javed Miandad,’ I yelled. ‘You have put on weight.’

  ‘Imran bhai,’ he yelled back. ‘You have lost weight.’

  On the brink of a bear hug we decided against it and shook hands. And once enough pleasantries were exchanged and enough smiles smiled, I began to rant about how I missed the mohalla, how I envied him for being able to go back after the farewell party to his tiny room above Haja Stores and stand at a derelict balcony above the colonnaded shops to watch traffic crawl down the road to the intersection, to smell the aroma of Arabic delicacies cooked at wayside stalls, to have a smoke and tea as the sun set behind Franklin and the biggest neon board on the street started bluffing about the century-old legacy of Akbar Electricals.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. �
�I will show you a bit of the mohalla I have captured over the last few months,’ Javed Miandad said.

  Cradling the camera in his hands, he kept a red button pressed until a screen the size of a cigarette pack flashed to life with the sound of a sword being waved in the air. ‘Stand behind me and look over my shoulder,’ he said.

  With each punch of the button the swish of a sword escaped the camera and, one by one, pictures flashed across the screen. But the angles were so dramatic and the pictures so hopelessly abstract that the subject could have been any goddamn place on earth. An orange sun cut into three unequal pieces by electric cables; a half-empty glass of tea placed on a patina-coloured stool; a dog sleeping in front of a rust-coloured shutter; snippets of an unsuspecting street captured from Javed Miandad’s rundown balcony; and the aerial view of a funeral procession, of a green rattan casket submerged in a sea of white skullcaps against the backdrop of a tree that I recognized with some effort as the good old Franklin. I wondered whose last journey out of the mohalla it was, whose page in the imam’s ledger had earned an amendment and whose death had finally brought glory to his life.

  Something told me that Shair Shoukath lay inside the green casket, his shoulders knocking softly against the rattan planks in tandem with the unsynchronized movements of the people who carried the casket. Ammi had casually mentioned the demise of my favourite poet, and how the mohalla had mourned the irreparable loss of a voice that was so strong and original that the pseudo-intellectuals in the locality had indicted him with shameless plagiarism. No one outside the mohalla had ever said a word against him, for his verses and fame never travelled past the intersection to the south and the cemetery of St Francis Basilica to the north.

  Radical poetry has lost its torchbearer.

  Shair Shoukath will be greatly missed.

  – Professor Suleiman Ilahi (1949- )

  Without his contributions, the Poetry Club

  would never have become what it is today.

  – Rustom sahib (1951- )

  Javed Miandad kept glancing over his shoulder to see if he was wanted inside the Record Room where something that should not be seen through a viewfinder was currently in progress. Maybe they had taken out something distilled in the backyard of the prison soon after the convoy of government vehicles had left the compound and begun drinking it or they were passing the hat around to give the superintendent an unofficial lump sum. His finger kept punching a button with clockwork precision, making pictures slide in and out of the screen.

  Now I was looking at less dramatic pictures, though their appearance and disappearance were still marked by the same crisp swish of the sword.

  ‘These are the pictures that buy me three square meals a day, Imran bhai. They are not a part of my portfolio.’

  A man who looked like Morgan Freeman stood in front of a mike. A man who reminded you of KofiAnnan held up a trophy the size of a teacup. A boy who looked like the younger brother Yahya never had smiled from the stock floral vignette of a green badge. A frightfully small stage stood, lopsided, at the end of an alley I could not recognize. I asked Javed Miandad to go to the previous slide.

  ‘Who is this?’ I asked, pointing a finger at the boy on the badge.

  Javed Miandad screwed up his eyes and shielded the screen with a hand against the glare of sunlight. ‘Ah, it’s Yahya. The dumb boy who committed suicide. He was your friend, no?’ he said, looking over his shoulder once again. ‘His family has started an annual mime competition in his memory. Sponsored by none other than Abu Hathim.’

  Before I could jokingly ask him if one of my parents had won it every time, Javed Miandad stiffened beside me and his voice hardened, ‘Just walk away from me, Imran bhai. A warden is watching us.’ He glued an eye to the viewfinder and tilted his face to follow the flight of an imaginary bird. I drifted away towards the bamboo clumps by the garden steps as a warden came down a gravel path to summon Javed Miandad back to the Record Room. The last time I looked back, he was on his knees, trying to take the best snap of the bird that the sky was completely bereft of.

  The green badge and the boy at its centre stayed with me through the night. I dreamed of Yahya and woke up to the chirp of birds that lived in the trees in the courtyard, darting little sparrows I had started to think of as jailbirds. It was still dark outside, except for a bare electric bulb that dangled from the roof of a windowless expanse of lime-washed wall. I decided to stay up what remained of the night; sunrise couldn’t be far away, else birds would not have started chirping.

  I remembered standing under the willow tree, wearing a fake Armani T-shirt and a pair of jeans torn at the knees, listening to a bunch of old men while Jameela Auntie waited in the alley. The men spoke in mild accusatory tones, imparting no specific information about the death until a mourner, who had woken up late because he had stayed up late watching the aftermath of the bomb blasts on TV, joined them and asked rapid-fire questions. Who, when, how, where ... And one of the old men with a goatee that Humera and Tabu would die for narrated Yahya’s final day as if he had witnessed it himself. Some old dicks have a penchant for spinning yarns, and they turn hearsay into convincing eyewitness accounts with ease. And this was what Goatee told the latecomer:

  The afternoon Mangobagh’s three streets rocked with bomb blasts and the rest with its reverberations, Yahya came home late for lunch. He was stuffing himself up hurriedly as if he had some important post-lunch appointments to honour when his father, as was the old man’s weekly habit, started scolding the boy for frittering away his time like it were counterfeit money. The boy finished his lunch without resorting to sign language – which invariably ended with the third finger from the thumb moving up and down in the air – to answer his father, and settled on the sofa to watch the afternoon movie on TV. He loved English movies, especially ones that involved prisons or sacked FBI agents. The old man followed him to the narrow, dingy room where he continued spitting invectives on the boy, the likes of whom had been termed as the favourites of God by people like Mother Teresa. In spite of his KofiAnnan looks, the old man was probably the basest domestic villain in the area, and once he got himself started he couldn’t stop until the neighbours intervened. This afternoon he wouldn’t let the boy watch Ghost Rider in peace, though the boy had already watched Ghost Rider thrice on Star Movies and twice on DVD. Sounding like a car horn that got stuck and kept blaring, he ranted on, calling the boy’s five best friends the mohalla’s shadiest characters, and accusing him of coming home just to eat, watch movies and sleep on the sofa thereafter. Would today’s kids sit through such nonstop crap?

  Goatee was sure his own grandson Aamir would certainly not tolerate such heartless haranguing. In rage, the boy switched channels and kept staring at the screen until tears welled up in his eyes. After a while, tears streaming down his face, he stormed out of the house. The old one was still ranting when the boy returned with something wrapped in a newspaper and locked himself up in his room. Ten minutes later he came out of the room frothing at the mouth, clutching his stomach and moaning silently.

  If you had spotted a taxi zipping through the mohalla with the headlights blazing in broad daylight and the horn tootling nonstop, it was the boy’s parents, an uncle and Goatee taking him to Shahbaz Memorial Hospital. It was a bad day to consume poison, because all the hospitals were bursting with the bomb blast victims. There was not even a wheelchair available, let alone a vacant bed. They spread a sheet in the passage outside the casualty wing and gave him first aid. But Goatee had already given him first aid in the car, a surah whispered into his ear. They said they would wash his stomach after ten minutes and asked them to keep talking to him. His parents could only cry, his uncle was on the phone; Goatee was the one who did all the talking. He kept telling the boy he was going to be all right though the boy didn’t look good at all. He signalled to his mother for water, and she poured water into his mouth and verses into his left ear. At first he gulped it hungrily down, then his mouth filled up and water started strea
ming from the corners of his mouth. Goatee asked the lady to stop, but she kept on feeding him. Mother, no? Mothers love feeding kids, no? She couldn’t believe that the boy had gone. The first thing Goatee did after coming back from the hospital was tell his children to handle their children with caution. Don’t chide them beyond a point. Today’s kids are suicidal. The funeral is after the zuhr prayers. At the Purana Masjid Kabristan.

  And you, local Michael Jackson, don’t ever visit a house of death

  in torn clothes. Even if you are a ragpicker’s son.

  – Goatee ( - )

  The sun had risen above the prison wall; the jailbirds were hopping about in the courtyard as the sun touched the shingles with a feathery orange light.

  XIX

  This case will be remembered not for

  the number of people convicted.

  But for the number of people who could have been.

  ~ City Journal (1898- )

  The new superintendent looks much younger than his predecessor. He has big, sad eyes and no moustache, and has a habit of looking away when inmates smile at him. He probably thinks we are making fun of him for his young age and fleshy cheeks, for his quick stride and hairy hands. With his deputy and three head wardens in tow, he once breezed through the Book Room, fixing everyone with a hard stare as if each and every inmate were on his list of convicts to be dealt with an iron hand.

  I think I saw one of the wardens whom Zia got suspended with his vanishing act back in action, briefing a batch of newcomers on the work rules of the prison under a tree. Each newcomer is like a backpacker, only that he misplaces his papers and gets embroiled in legal complications and long delays, and is destined to live in a nation that allows only two types of civilian clothes – khaki for the rulers, white for the ruled – until his papers are tracked down, cleared and stamped ‘Exit’.

  This twelve-year-old Imran is a rare talent. Look at his