Fireproof

by Raj Kamal Jha

  They don’t listen, A, B, C and D.

  A chews his lip,

  B blows some air,

  C looks around,

  And D fixes his hair.

  ‘You are like my students,’ he says, ‘you are more well off than my students, I can see that in the way you dress, in the way you talk to each other, you are educated. Your parents must be kind. You should be in college, in the university, you should be studying science, commerce, these days everyone wants an MBA, you should be studying that. There are many private management colleges now. You have a very bright future, all of you. My students aren’t so lucky, it’s a government school and you know what we have, what we don’t have, but I keep telling my students, don’t waste your future. All four of you should be working, if you need help, please come to me any time, day, night, morning evening, I am usually free, I retired long ago. Although I don’t know if I can teach you, I teach boys and girls, in junior classes. I now teach only two days a week in the school, they haven’t hired new teachers yet, you must have seen the school on your way here. I have difficulty sleeping, I don’t have any children here, the only one lives far away, he got married last year. His wife, my daughter-in-law, is here with me now. She is about your age, she is like your sister, she is pregnant with my grandchild, four to five more months before the birth, she has come to stay with me for a few days because my son is away, he didn’t want to leave her alone, he will be back tomorrow and until then she is staying with me. Her own parents are no more but I told her, don’t you worry, I am here. And it doesn’t matter, son or daughter, let your child be safe, healthy, let you be safe and healthy. My wife died thirteen years ago. So besides being a grandfather, telling the child stories at night, I will have to be the grandmother as well, make the child eat, take him out in the sun, play with him, oil him, his hands and his legs, so that his muscles and bones grow. How much can the mother do? She takes care of me, she is busy cooking and cleaning the whole day. As we are talking, I am talking, you people don’t even say a word, she is working in the kitchen now, making dinner.’ They don’t listen.

  A clenches his fist,

  C sizes up the man,

  B just watches,

  D chalks out the plan.

  ‘You are like my students,’ he says, ‘take all my books, all of them, there are about a hundred, the only valuables I have. Help yourself, take whatever you want. But they are old books, I don’t know if they will be of any use. Many of them are in Urdu, I can read them to you. There are some books in English as well, mathematics and history, that’s what I teach, some adventures, some pocketbooks in Hindi I buy at the railway station whenever I go to pick up my son and my daughter-in-law. I always go to the station, they keep telling me, Abba, you are old, you should not be waiting there in the crowd, I told them if I can teach twice a week, I can go to the station. You can take these books with you, I will buy more. Anyways, I have to go out tomorrow, I have to collect my pension from the school, if it’s open. Tomorrow, I have to sign the life certificate, proof that I am alive so that they can release my pension. You are four young men, I will help you, give me your addresses and I will come, right on time; I won’t charge anything because I like teaching. I taught for thirty years.’

  They don’t listen.

  Maybe we need some wood,

  Maybe we need some oil.

  Then we could light the flame,

  And watch the thing boil.

  ‘You are like my students,’ he says, ‘some of them are like you, very headstrong, impatient, angry but that’s because you are young and young people get angry, should get angry. Especially young people in this country. Once I wrote a letter to the editor of the paper, they published it but they cut it, only published about five or six lines when I had sent them two full pages. I told them the Prime Minister, when he refers to the common man, should talk about the common young man and common young woman like my students, they are common, everything in the country should be for them. Don’t do anything special for us, the elderly, we just want to live peacefully. One day, and that day isn’t far away, we will die, so please don’t waste your time or money on old people like us, please take care of the young. Because the young are the future, we are old, can’t do anything other than teach a few children and sit in our houses, think of what has gone by, wait for our grandchildren to grow up, maybe drop them off to school.’

  They don’t listen.

  Do we get him first?

  Or do we spare him?

  Go for the woman,

  And then come for him?

  ‘You are like my students,’ he says, ‘they feared me, yes, but they always respected me. Everyone in this neighbourhood respects me because I am the teacher, this is why I am still here, why I didn’t move out of this neighbourhood although my son kept saying, come here, you should live with us in a safer city, in a safer state. I laughed at him, I said, no one will kill me here, they all respect me, it doesn’t matter which religion I am. Even now, after retirement, when I get off the bus and walk home from school, the children, boys and girls, come running to me and say, Abba Abba, let us carry your bag, your books, they are heavy. But I tell them, no, as long as I have two hands and two legs and as long as I can carry this weight, I will do it. Thank you very much. But my son says, Abba, this has nothing to do with how honest you are, that you called your students home and you taught them for free. It doesn’t matter that you did not miss a single day at school, that you were the only teacher who had a hundred per cent attendance even if you had a fever. They will come for you if they wish to. But I told him, no, you are just angry. They all respect me because of the kind of teacher I was. That’s why I will always be safe.’

  They don’t listen.

  When will he stop

  This silly, stupid chatter?

  His son is dead right

  That it doesn’t matter.

  ‘You are like my students,’ he says, ‘if you are hungry, tell me, I have something in the kitchen. When my wife was alive, many of my students would come for help with their homework and stay for dinner. Some of them were from poor families so I thought, why not, let them eat here, I don’t have ten people to feed. Now my daughter-in-law is here, dinner will take her just about half an hour or so. She’s a very good cook, makes some Chinese too, where she learned all this I don’t know. If you want to eat in separate dishes, I can arrange that, too. I won’t mind at all, I have paper plates and paper cups. If you can’t wait, I think we have biscuits, she can make you some tea. Sit down, have some tea and biscuits, it’s cold tonight. Tell me about yourself, one by one. But you know you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. In my class, I never forced my students to answer questions and that’s why I think I was one of their most respected teachers. I never singled them out, I never told them to stand up and answer, I would ask a question and say, whoever among you wants to answer, please answer, and I never took it seriously because I know some of the best students are those who are shy, who don’t want to get up and talk. And I was proved right, there was this one student who never got up to answer a single question but is now teaching in America. That, too, history.’

  They don’t listen.

  Did any one see

  The woman perchance?

  What does she look like?

  Worth a second glance?

  ‘TAKE whatever you want,’ he says, ‘as I told you, the only valuables I have are my books. If you don’t want to read them, you can sell them, you will get good money since many of these books are books out of print, special editions you may not find anymore. Or you can even sell them as scrap, there is a dealer, five minutes from here, where I go with my month’s newspapers. If you don’t want the books, take the furniture that I have. There are two chairs I bought thirty years ago when my wife first came from the village to the city, when she didn’t know the language of the city and used to stay at home all twenty-four hours. The chairs are of teak or mahogany, I am not sure which, they have
n’t splintered once in thirty years. Solid, now they don’t use wood like this, now they have things called board, plywood. But in my house you won’t find even one centimetre, one inch of that.’

  They don’t listen.

  Doesn’t this man know

  That it’s not about wood?

  It’s about fixing him

  And his brothers for good.

  ‘Take whatever you want,’ he said, ‘there is also a TV set, about a year old, my daughter-in-law got it for me when she came the last time. She saw me sitting in my room with the radio on and I told her I don’t need a TV set but she got it and went to the cable operator, paid him a year’s cable charge and installed it here. Three thousand rupees for just the cable. I watch it sometimes for the news, sometimes for cricket, my daughter-in-law watches it more when she is here, she has all these shows that she likes to watch, beginning in the afternoon. I told her it’s better to read books but then I know, given how hard she works the whole day and especially now that she’s pregnant, this relaxes her so I let her do what she wants. But you can take the TV set. She can always go to the neighbour’s. And anyways, she will go back to her own house tomorrow. They have a TV there with a bigger screen.’

  They don’t listen.

  Let’s get it over with,

  Just as we did,

  The auto-rickshaw man,

  And the woman who hid.

  ‘Take whatever you want,’ he says, ‘if you don’t want the TV, there’s some jewellery, which my wife left behind for my daughter-in-law. It’s gold; one bracelet, four bangles, two anklets, a few necklaces and three pairs of earrings she got from me during her marriage and some she brought from her father’s home. Some I was keeping for my granddaughter or my grandson when he gets married. If I live that long. But take it, you will get a good price. I don’t know how long I will live anyway, my father died when he was sixty-four so I have outlived him by twelve years. Many days, I sit and wonder what I am living for, and then the only thing that comes to mind is that my grandson, or my granddaughter, will be born in the summer, four more months, the doctor has said. I would like to see him grow, learn to walk, maybe even go to school but no, I am not that selfish. Once I see him walk and go to school for the first time, that’s enough, anything over and top of it is a bonus. So that’s four years at the most, I will be eighty by then, a good time to go, eighty.’

  They don’t listen.

  A hits the man,

  C kicks his shin,

  B just watches,

  D has gone in.

  ‘Why do you want to kill me,’ he says, ‘please go and ask everyone in this neighbourhood, please go to my school and ask my students. Ask about me, ask what I have taught them. I have never taught hate; I am not lying, please look at the exercise books, please see the homework, please see my notes. Read my diaries, the essays I asked my students to write. Yesterday, when I heard about the fire in the train, ask everyone here, I said, this cannot be explained or pardoned, how can you kill passengers in a train? I said the same thing last year when that attack happened in America, I asked how could you kill men, women and children like that and not feel sad. Imagine if one of my students was there in that building, with an old father, just like me; what would happen to him? Every August 15, Independence Day, I sit with my students and tell them how proud and privileged we are to live in this country. I have the National Flag with me, it’s kept very carefully, I can ask my daughter-in-law to show it to you. It’s made of silk, in the cupboard, on the same shelf as my wife’s jewellery. They call me for the flag-hoisting in the school because they say, Abba, you are the only one who has seen Nehru and Gandhi. If all of this means nothing, if you aren’t listening, if you have to kill, just as you have the others in this neighbourhood, if you have come here with your mind made up, then please let my daughter-in-law go, please kill me instead. She is like your sister, she has a baby inside her. Kill me, I am already very old, I have finished my time in this world. Yes, I will not be able to see my grandchild but that’s all right.’

  They don’t listen.

  They brush him aside,

  He falls to the floor,

  They then walk inside.

  And then they rape the daughter-in-law

  They strangle her with a towel.

  They slit her throat.

  They wait for her to die.

  They slit her stomach, all the way down. From her breasts to her pubic bone.

  They take her baby out.

  They throw up, at the sight of unborn flesh.

  And, of course, the blood.

  They throw up on the kitchen countertop, over the vegetables she was peeling.

  Then they set the house on fire, they burn the dining table.

  The gas cylinder explodes, the ceiling caves in, the pillar holding it comes crashing down, they sprinkle kerosene, they throw flaming rags.

  The fire licks the floor, spares two dish racks on the wall, as if it had mercy at the end.

  That’s the picture of the kitchen at the top of the page.

  On their way out, they wipe their hands on a small hand-towel and throw it onto the street.

  They kick Abba, the talkative old schoolteacher, in his stomach, they spit on him but they leave him alive.

  So he can collect his pension tomorrow, can keep talking. So that he can live the last few years of his life with a fear he has never felt before. So he can sit down when his son comes and they can both cry and he can tell the son all that happened, all that he told A, B, C and D, and his son can say, ‘I told you so, Abba, I told you so. It has nothing to do with your honesty and your respect and probably nothing to do with the silk flag lying in your cupboard. Let’s leave this city.’

  And what will they do then?

  Should Abba sit with Shabnam and Tariq and teach them history? Or should he tell his son to go and remarry, to forget his wife, forget the kitchen, to father another child so that the child can play with Abba, Abba can take him to the market, to school, and maybe one day tell him what happened?

  Look at Abba, he is hurt, he is bleeding, he is alive. He who told them that he had finished his life in the world, he will get up later in the morning and wait for his son. Because Abba has to carry on. He can’t kill himself, can he? Imagine what people would say: this man committed suicide when the city was on fire, when there were already enough people on the streets being killed, when there were already enough people who wanted to kill.

  END OF THIRD ATTACHMENT AND END OF THE MESSAGE

  14. A Dot and a Streak

  MISS Glass had said, please read them carefully, please give them time and concentration. Well, I did give them time, I did give them concentration. Forty-five minutes, a full forty-five minutes minimum – it might have been more, up to an hour, I wasn’t checking my watch – that’s how long it took me to read all three attachments, Tariq, Shabnam and Abba, the ten thousand words or thereabouts, the thirty-five or so pages. And to look at the three pictures, not very sharp but, yes, I did concentrate on the details. Like the fire’s scorch marks on the wall of Tariq’s house, below the windows, beside the doors. I saw the ridges in the floor of the burnt auto-rickshaw, the No Entry sign, the ripped-out roof, the shreds of canvas, the iron frame that had withstood the blaze. And in Abba’s kitchen, the steel kettle was safe, the teacups behind it (three I counted, there could be more), the plates, dishes. All left untouched. And, of course, I read about the four killings. A mother, two parents, a daughter-in-law.

  Five, if you add her unborn child.

  And didn’t Miss Glass say, in her message, they had already killed hundreds, perhaps even a thousand.

  So shall we, for a moment, ignore those thousand, look at only these five?

  5 out of 1000, that’s 0.5 per cent. I am good with numbers.

  If you prefer metaphor instead of mathematics, words and full stops instead of digits and decimal points, consider this: point five per cent means that if all the murdered, the men and the women, the
boys and the girls, the children and the foetuses – not one bird or beast was killed – were crushed to fit into the palm of your hand, a mother, two parents, a daughter-in-law and an unborn child, all of them taken together, would be little more than a speck on one fingernail.

  A dot.

  Easy to see, easy to erase.

  That’s why, sitting in the cybercafe, I didn’t dwell on them for long. Having read the attachments, after giving them my time and concentration, I folded the pages carefully – sure, I would read them again, look at the pictures again – and put them in Ithim’s bag, behind his back, as a support, as a cushion.

  ‘THAT’S one big message.’ Mr Meeko was standing behind me, looking over my shoulder just as I had finished adjusting the straps of the bag.

  ‘From a friend,’ I said, ‘he has a lot of things to say.’

  ‘I am sure,’ Mr Meeko smiled.

  Had he seen Ithim? It seemed unlikely because the bag was in front of me and I was clearly obstructing Mr Meeko’s line of vision.

  ‘You don’t have to pay for the printouts, you know, Mr Jay,’ he said, ‘you are the first customer of the day, very auspicious, I charge only for the time.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘How’s the Mrs? When is the big day?’

  ‘She is in the hospital, any day now.’

  It was the first time I had lied to Mr Meeko, who I had always thought of as a friend, but at that moment it seemed to be the most natural thing to do. It didn’t require any effort, it seemed harmless and it seemed practical: my wife hadn’t seen her child, so why should I show Ithim to anyone else? Also (and perhaps this was the real reason), I was on my way to set Ithim right, which meant that Ithim wasn’t ready yet.