Scattered Souls
Page 6
S/o: Ghulam Mohiuddeen [sic]*
Age: 12
Designation: Student
R/o: Tengpora, Batamaloo, Srinagar.
Crime: Stone pelting. Injured eleven on-duty policemen, three of them seriously (the detainee has been booked under the Jammu & Kashmir Public Safety Act 1978 for disturbing the peace of and waging war against the state).
Location of crime: Tengpora, Batamaloo, Srinagar.
Location of arrest: Tengpora, Batamaloo, Srinagar.
In their seizure memo, the police wrote:
Arms/articles recovered at the time of arrest: A white plastic bag (used for packaging of cement), weighing almost five kgs, carrying sharp-tipped stones and brick nuggets.
Background:
August 1997: Biul is born to Sakeena.
December 2001: Biul moves to Batamaloo from the bank of Zero Bridge, Raj Bagh with his mother and sister.
March 2002: Biul is admitted to the Government High School, Batamaloo.
July 2008: Biul went to school one morning and remained mysteriously absconding and missing for 17 days.
But now, when Biul sat watching the news about Obama on TV, there was a knock on the door. Biul’s heart pounded. They have come to take me, he thought. He stood in a corner of the room and put the TV on mute. When Sakeena went to answer the door, he strained his ears. The voice confirmed that it was the milkman. Biul sighed. Sakeena returned and marked the calendar, indicating that the milk had been delivered for the day. When she disappeared into the kitchen, Biul ran upstairs to the attic to scan the settlement, ensuring that everything seemed normal, that nobody else was coming to get him.
In autumn people loved basking outside their homes, soaking the last bit of sun to the point of boredom. The neighbourhood was a congestion of small, pillbox-like houses—the area divided by crisscrossing narrow dirt roads, the gables covered with corrugated tin, torn translucent polythene sheets or lines running across with clipped clothes drying on them, shutting off the view. The house facades were stuccoed or plastered or unplastered, the small lawns patterned in ways suggesting raw construction planning. The house that Biul and his family occupied was the succour provided by Dr. Imtiyaz after the government had failed to give Sakeena the promised rehabilitation in the Boatmen Colony, Bemina. Sakeena was still pursuing the case with the authorities.
It was a little colder in the attic. A lozenge of sunlight coming in through a hole in the tin roof warmed a spot on the back of Biul’s hand. As he peered over the neighbourhood, he moved his hand and tried to give its other spots the opportunity to receive the warmth of the sun, as if washing his hand under a running tap. Everything, as such, looked normal outside. Ghulam Muhammad Matta, the closest neighbour opposite Biul’s house was roughly five metres away and yet quite close in the field of Biul’s vision. He was as usual scaling the junk in his small compound packed with enormous piles of yellowed and mildewed newspapers and discarded plastic, his half-smoked cigarette tucked into the corner of his pursed lips, the smoke making him narrow his eyes and making him look more serious than he actually was. Past Ghulam Muhammad Matta’s, another neighbour Nasreen was typically hunched over in the small blue window of her kitchen, peeking out at each passerby, spying on the ones she knew. Nobody had ever seen her anywhere else except in the frame of that window. Biul always wondered at this mystery.
Then there was Kousar Aunty, sitting behind her snot-nosed daughter in the gateway of their house, keenly searching through her greasy, dishevelled hair for lice. At the locality’s end, close to the main road, a group of boys was playing carom. Occasionally, they shrieked with laughter, clapping their hands.
When Biul panned back to Ghulam Muhammad Matta, he noticed something more. There, beside Matta, was an open spreadsheet that showed a life-size image of a smiling black man who Biul recognized instantly. It is Obama, he said to himself. He swiftly descended the stairs, skipping alternate steps. In a matter of seconds, he was in Matta’s small lawn, looking fixedly at the paper. It certainly was the president of the USA, the man he had been chasing on TV for the last few days. The superimposed text at the bottom of the image said:
Hon’ble US President Mr. Barack Obama, Welcome to World’s Largest Democracy
Courtesy: Reliance India
‘Can I have it?’ Biul asked, gawking at the picture.
Ghulam Muhammad Matta stared at him in disbelief. It was the first time Biul had come into his lawn and talked to him. He wondered how Biul had come to know about the paper, and why on earth he wanted it. He kept his queries to himself and proffered the spreadsheet. ‘Take it,’ Matta said.
Back in the room, Biul sat cross-legged, staring at the picture. On TV, people with sickles in their hands were climbing coconut trees around the Gandhi Museum in Mumbai, one of the tourist venues Obama was going to visit. The men were going to harvest all the coconuts to prevent any accident. ‘Authorities don’t want to take a chance, since hundreds of people in India are injured or even killed by falling coconuts every year,’ reported BBC.
Once more there was a knock on the door, a light pat, and Biul froze. This time it was Sakeena’s mother. The moment he saw her, his palpitation subsided. Sakeena noticed the newspaper in front of Biul and wanted to ask him about it, but felt awkward to do so in front of her mother.
Biul slipped out of the house, quickly changing into a pair of oversized flip-flops, half stumbling on the narrow cement path that ran around the house towards the backyard with the tin storeroom. He rummaged through barrels full of coal, pushing his hand behind a rusted tin trunk for a large flattened cardboard box. He pulled it out. His thumb scraped against the sharp corner of the trunk, but he ignored it, waiting for the gash to bleed. When it did, he sucked on it and plugged it with his forefinger, the blood sticky at first then quickly drying between his fingers.
He brought the cardboard to the front verandah and laid it flat on the ground. Then he cut the page featuring Obama out of the newspaper and glued it to the cardboard. He let it dry in the sun. Once dried, he found Sakeena’s large scissors under her sewing machine and moved them along the outline of Obama’s figure, cutting off the courtesy text. Here is the one—the most powerful, smiling, first black president of the USA—who will bring a ray of hope to Kashmir, thought Biul.
He swaddled the cut-out in the remaining newspaper and sneaked out of the gate, skittering towards Raja Photo Studio, excited and shivering with paranoia. This was the hour when Mohsin could usually be found alone at the photo studio.
When Biul was just metres away from Raja Photo Studio, he stopped and blinked in surprise. The display showcase seemed entirely changed, filled with photos of different models. The tin board overhead now read ‘Mohsin Photo Studio’.
Mohsin was alone and seemingly free, seated at the large, glass-topped wooden counter where his uncle usually sat. He greeted Biul warmly and pulled a stool up for him.
‘Is your uncle around?’ Biul asked.
‘No, he is no longer here.’
‘Why? What happened?’
‘This shop was actually my mother’s legal share of the property. My uncle had taken it over after her death. Earlier, I was too young to know anything. A few months ago, my grandfather passed away, but not before legally securing the shop in my name. He called my uncle and extracted a written undertaking from him to leave the shop to me. It’s going to be mine from next year, once I am eighteen. My uncle has pulled out in advance.’
‘Good. But where do you live now?
‘I live with one of my aunts.’
‘Could you take a picture of me, please?’ Biul asked.
‘Sure. It’ll be a pleasure to do it for free. What size do you want?’
‘Normal size. But I need to pose with someone.’
They went into the studio. Biul unwrapped Obama. Mohsin was puzzled to see the cut-out.
‘So it’s him! The one everyone these days is talking about! Are you a fan?’ Mohsin asked.
‘A bit,’ Biul sai
d.
‘Well, as you wish. But he won’t appear as clear as you will in the picture.’
Biul dropped his arm over Obama’s shoulder and posed.
‘You both look good together,’ Mohsin commented, holding the camera against his eyeline, adjusting the lens to focus well.
There were several clicks and flashes.
‘Let Obama stay here for a few days, maybe more fans will turn up,’ Mohsin told Biul.
‘Please keep it,’ Biul said.
‘Thank you! I can give you the print of the photo now.’
The printer warmed and coughed up a sheet of glazy paper, issuing a wisp of pungent, powdery steam with identical photographs of Biul posing with Obama.
‘Here you are,’ said Mohsin, tucking the photographs into an envelope. ‘Keep them all or keep the best one, your choice. All are yours.’
Biul strutted home, clasping the envelope. Worried, Sakeena had come out of the house to look for him. She saw him at a distance and her relief quickly changed to anger.
‘What is this?’ she asked, ‘I thought they had come and taken you!’
He didn’t respond, just fell into pace beside her.
She noticed the envelope in his hand but didn’t question him about it, though she sorely wished to.
‘I was just gone for a bit,’ Biul said softly.
‘It has been an hour or more,’ she nagged. ‘Tathi is worried. She has been waiting. I know you don’t care.’
He hung his head in guilt.
In the evening, he showed the photographs to the big boys who huddled in groups in the playground. One of them teased Biul for being ‘hypersensitive about the first black American president’. ‘You are hyper. Don’t worship the man; you never know … Don’t die like this …’ a boy said. The word ‘hyper’ disappointed Biul, but he was steadfast in his faith in Obama.
Days passed and finally Obama arrived in India. Biul clung to the TV, flipping from one channel to another, waiting for the breaking news. He followed each comment, speech, venture and visit of Obama and his wife, the First Lady Michelle, the couple’s dance with a horde of poor schoolchildren in the premises of a rundown school building, waiting for the President to mention Kashmir. He sat up on those nights, gazing into the blue glow of the TV, the volume lowered to an indistinct mumble.
Biul spent some time pampering the glistening green necks of his pigeons in the lawn, stroking their rumps, throwing them into the air, their wings flapping before gaining height. They flew over the neighbourhood and came back, one by one, obeying his call, the coded whistles and calculated clapping. After shutting them in their coop, he made himself some kahwa and took the cup to the TV room.
It was the last day of Obama’s tour in India. All the channels showed him live, making a speech in the Indian parliament. The president of the United States mentioned everything in his brief speech, praising Indian leadership, the country’s economic might, heritage, civilization, the contribution of Zero, Gandhi and hospitality—‘Indians unlocked the intricacies of the human body and the vastness of our universe’. It was all India, India and India. Kashmir wasn’t mentioned at all.
Biul was supremely disappointed. Again, clear flashes of the policeman’s dark hairy groin, clanking of the dangling, glinting steel buckle of his police belt, with a raised steel police logo on it, crossed his mind.
In the afternoon, Biul unplugged the TV and sat down to assist Sakeena in her tailoring, as he sometimes would. He sat calmly beside her, taking up a ladies’ shirt. He stitched hooks onto its neck.
Later in the evening, he set off to Mohsin Photo Studio, his hands inside his pheran, sauntering, tearing the photographs he had taken with the cut-out of Obama into pieces and chucking them into the twilight like confetti. He dashed straight into the shop. Mohsin was busy with some customers at the counter outside, but he cut short his dealings to follow Biul, noting how upset he seemed.
Inside the studio, Biul stared at the cut-out of Obama. Then, deliberately, he slid it off its wooden holder. Mohsin stood in the doorway of the studio, watching him do it.
Biul replaced the cut-out with one of Salman Khan’s that had been lying there for sometime.
Oil and Roses
To dwell is to garden.
—Martin Heidegger
T he earth has to be at its softest to accept the seed well, thinks Gul Baaghwaan. He is planning to plant the hybrid seeds for the nth time. He has secretly thought of a name for the flower and plans to disclose it as soon as there is some sign of sprouting. He is confident that the flower will resemble a species which went extinct around sixty years ago in Kashmir.
Each spring the saplings tear through the earth, making Gul impatient and expectant. For years he has experimented only with the native nurseries. What he really wants, however, is to see riots of red poppies blooming everywhere against the green grass or the mustard crops of spring.
Gul is the head gardener at one of the terraced Mughal gardens in the Zabarwan hills in Srinagar. The hills and the gardens overlook the weedy Dal lake. Ever since he lost his only foster son to a stray bullet, Gul has grown serious, pernickety and reticent. When no one is looking, he talks to plants, trees, flowers and birds. And on their behalf, he responds to his own utterances.
Every morning, he whizzes down the shop-lined road from Braine to the garden on his new, shiny LML Vespa at full throttle. The scooter is a month old purchase, bought at the insistence of his wife. ‘Now it suits your seniority in the garden,’ she had said. Earlier, he had travelled up and down on his Atlas bicycle that now lies disused and idles in a shadowy tin shed at his house, its tyres deflated.
At home, Gul watches news on his colour TV set, pedastalled on a tin trunk near the hearth in the kitchen. His wife sits opposite the hearth on a chowki and cooks his piquant, tantalising favourite gaada-tamaatar. On the tiled wall of the chimney overhead is a picture of their dead son, Wahid. Other features in the kitchen include a disused hookah and a defunct Panasonic tape-recorder.
While sitting side by side with his wife in the evenings, Gul’s wide and curious eyes are glued to the TV screen, fraught with grainy images of a furious crowd milling around Tahrir Square in Egypt. It is a visual from the Arab Spring.
Together, Gul and his wife struggle against their loneliness. Small tasks keep them busy. Either they garden in the ornamental patch of land in front of their house, or cultivate the small kitchen garden beside the house. Gul has a great variety of plants in his small garden: Sweet Williams, Fox Gloves, Yellow Poppies, red, yellow, white and pink rosebushes. Four equidistant bougainvillea-wound larches dot the four corners of the garden. A high wall of evergreens, cut into alternating troughs and crests, separate the ornamental garden from the kitchen garden, but a patch of rough grass seems to blend the two together. Gul himself is fond of a balance between the rough and fair. He doesn’t approve of absolute trimmings or clear distinctions.
The kitchen garden is an irregular stretch of land, checkered with rectangular beds of collard greens, green chillies, knol khols and shallots. There is endlessly spreading mint, taking root beyond the edges of the land. Also, in a corner of the vegetation, near the compost dump, is a scaffolding made of rough wooden posts and crooked dry branches for bottle-gourds, bitter-gourds and cucumbers.
On Sundays and alternate evenings, Gul works part-time in the private gardens of the posh colonies of Ishbar and Nishat. Most of the palatial houses he goes to are uninhabited. In each one, he is guided by a watchman or a lone old man, and directed to tend this bed or that or prune this bush or that. He wonders about these vast houses. The emptiness and silence is broken only by the secretly darting birds who start warbling sweet music in the boughs of peach and pear and apple trees as soon as he begins to turn the earth inside out with his hoe or begins to hose down the turf.
Gul takes the second halves of Fridays off. First, he mends his gardening tools, sharpens his shears and trowels and sorts through various species of seeds, wrapping them in
pieces of the Valley Times. Then, after an early, light lunch, he takes his wife fifty kilometres away to a shrine at Chrar-e-Sharief, where, in the interstices of a wooden grille, he has tied a votive knot for his experimental flower to bloom. In the first decade of their childless marriage, Gul and his wife visited this shrine with great wishes, but in vain. Of late, she has now accepted her infertility and her foster son’s tragic death, but her gardener husband has not given up hope.
On working days, when the sun begins to glare at the Mughal garden, Gul parks his Vespa inside the parking lot. In one of the shady corners of the garden, there is a shanty. Gul enters it and from a flaking Rexine kit he retrieves his old set of tools: a narrow trowel, a small garden hoe and a pair of long shears. He notes the time on his heirloom chain watch, slips it back into his waist-coat’s pocket, takes the coat off, dusts its dandruff-covered shoulders and suspends it on a rusty nail, half dug into the wooden wall of the shanty. Then, as usual, he folds the sleeves of his Khansuit shirt and sets off towards the garden.
Out of habit, he takes a look at the Valley Times, delivered to the garden for the gardeners. He scans the headlines and then goes around, inspecting the work of his subordinates.
He never joins the superficial analysis of politics his colleagues indulge in during lunchtime, and always thinks of it as vague and petty, below his notice. Late in the morning, when springtime tourists start thronging the garden, Gul deliberately busies himself with tilling, trimming, pruning, shaping, sowing, watering, weeding and surveying the canopies of interspersing branches of chinars, observing the spaces between their dense, lush green foliage, filled with sunshine and shade. But he hardly smiles at blossoming flowers or happy tourists. He regards it all as his duty and never marvels at the fruits of his own labour. When alone and deep in the shrubbery, he begins talking to plants.
At the sight of tourists, he turns to the parched stream that used to flow down the centre of the garden in summer, dividing it into two equal parts. And strangely, he derives pleasure from its dryness. He becomes indifferent to the wind-fallen chinars, the long row of waterless fountains and the interiors of the medieval Mughal domes, littered with anonymous charcoal sketches of arrows-shot-through-hearts or knife-carved initials of lovers’ names. But the discovery of discarded translucent bottles and empty chips packets irritates him. Even the photographers in the garden—those who woo the tourists with cultural fake silver jewellery, fake red velvet pherans and wicker trugs—irritate him. He hates the trespassers who ignore the fenced partitions in the garden to pluck flowers, despite the bright blue tin signages that scream: CUT A FLOWER AND YOU CUT A SMILE.