I was not a customer of the tailor’s. He knew that I was more of a ready-made clothes person. He had no complaints. In fact, he supplied to the ready-mades market as well. A decent man, he never tried to force his products on me. Thus, without a customer–producer factor between us, our familiarity grew and we became friendly.
His shop was on a busy street in the bazaar. It was impossible to ignore the saintly smile he would bestow on one and all passing by, irrespective of whether they were his customers or not. Yet, somehow, he did not appear to have many friends. And, as I think about it, I realize I had never seen any customers in his shop either. Whenever I had looked in, there were only he and his assistants.
My friend was not, of course, the product of any institute of fashion technology. He was not even famous in the trade. That he did not look at the job of dressmaking from the angle of fashion was perhaps the reason for his unpopularity. Famous or not, I had no reason to doubt his talent or artistic capabilities.
No one who had met him once would have failed to notice that the secret of his art was not just his talent and craft, but the involvement and dedication with which he invested himself in his work. I used to tell myself that if the dresses he made were beautiful poems, his stitching had the grace of a dancer. In fact, it was his dance-like movements when engaged in his work that had first caught my attention. Only later when I started talking to him did I learn he was also a poet. My deduction was that the rhythm he exhibited in his movements when he stitched spilled over into his words when he spoke.
One day, I wondered if the interest and concern he gave to his art perhaps also reached out to the people who were supposed to wear the clothes he stitched. That was when it dawned on me that most of his creations just hung in the showcases of his shop, never reaching a customer. He poured out his time and talent to give human shape to plain, flat cloth, but he could not stand them upright or breathe life into them. It was a sad sight to see the clothes hanging from the shop hangers, shoulders sagging, sleeves swinging lifelessly. Beautifully made coats, achkans, sherwanis, kurtas, phirans—their shapes and designs had become so familiar to me, having seen them there for days and months, that if I saw anyone in the street wearing them, I would be able to say with certainty that it was his work. But I had never seen them outside his shop. I hailed him from the street to share my thoughts. He was immersed in his work, his feet moving rhythmically on the pedals of the machine and his delicate fingers following the dance of the needle. He completed the section he was doing, rose after briefly touching the machine with his forehead ritualistically. With a blissful smile of fulfilment he invited me inside.
‘Don’t mind my asking, friend, what is the matter with your beautiful works of art?’ I asked hesitantly. ‘Fashion is raging in town. People buy new dresses without waiting for the old ones to live out their life. Festival seasons come and go. And your magnificent creations continue to hang in the showcases, empty and dead.’
The tailor spent a few moments eyeing the street in front of the shop. Then, suddenly, to my surprise he burst out in the form of a poetical soliloquy, unmindful of my presence: ‘Wandering in the streets are innumerable souls. Injured, broken, fragmented and falling apart. Unable to recognize each other and failing to find their way, they wander listlessly. People who should become characters, heroes and heroines of grand plays drift about namelessly, naked and not knowing that they are naked.’
The rhyme and music in his words captured my interest. It was certainly a new way of looking at the hundreds of people I have been seeing every day on the streets. To me they appeared anxious to reach their homes or whichever destination they were heading towards. Cheerful and spirited they looked sometimes, and at other times worried or wary. I had not thought of looking at them this way. Unable to recognize each other, failing to find their way, broken, falling apart … as if their identities had been so shattered physically and mentally that each limb was moving about freely, as if they were naked to the extent of not realizing their nakedness …
‘If one has lost his self, individuality, home and path, if nakedness has fallen over him in the way you lament, my friend, wouldn’t that nakedness itself become his clothing?’ I responded, trying to fit myself into the poetical mood he was in. ‘In a state where limbs are falling apart and moving freely, one would not know if the hand striking at him was his own or operating from another man’s shoulder.’
The tailor appeared happy with my response. He said, ‘Or the hand consoling him, for that matter. Who can say if you are placing someone else’s hand and not yours on the shoulder of a fellow being to console him? Consolation thus gets detached from the consoler, from the one being consoled, and floats between the two on its own.’
I thought our poetical excursion was going too far and it was time to get back to reality. We were being hijacked by our metaphors, a predicament writers often find themselves in. Words jump in from nowhere and interrupt our dialogue with our readers as well as with our characters. It is not an easy and happy walk for a writer, between these two entities, as many seem to imagine. Especially when the medium of the journey is one where reality, logic, fiction and fantasy compete with each other. The predicament of a writer could also be that of an artist, as with my friend here.
So I asked the tailor: ‘And yet, my friend, these fragmented souls do converse between themselves. They are laughing, quarrelling, embracing, kissing, caressing and even mating to produce new entities.’
This time the tailor was clearly displeased with my intervention. Perhaps he found my artistic fervour to be a step behind his. That I did not belong on the plane where he lived. And he was not willing to walk back with me.
Shaking his head and sticking to his style of poetics, but now with a new harshness in his voice, he cut in, ‘The new souls they give birth to would not be very different from them. Fragmented, directionless and away from the light of truth. The false light they go after mistakenly will only lead them to hell, where they will remain like animals, naked externally and internally.’
I was a bit alarmed by this change in language and tone. At that moment he resembled a prophet, I feared. Or, perhaps an artist’s predicament could also at times be that of a prophet—an artist has an element of the prophetic within him.
In a moment he started drifting away from me, his listener. Like a sleepwalker he moved towards the door; he stood there and, raising his hands in the air, addressed an imaginary multitude out on the road: ‘Oh, you poor souls that wander in the wilderness, naked and not knowing your nakedness, fragmented to pieces and not knowing that you are unable to put yourself together, gather your limbs and come to me, get into these garments I have made for you. Let me give you a shape, a path, a destination. Let me show you your real desires, passions and mates. Liberate yourself through the art of this artist. Nothing else can grant you this freedom in these times, these tragic times!’
‘Of course, be their tailor,’ I said to placate him. ‘But why not allow them to choose their clothing?’ I said, trying to pull him back from his frenzy.
The tailor placed his hand on my shoulder in such a way that I felt its full weight. He eyed me sternly. ‘Man does not select his clothes, my friend, clothes select the man. Clothes are stitched not just to make the wearer look attractive, but to give him a shape, a character, a soul. They formulate his behaviour, direct his actions. Clothes make him understand his objectives and the path he needs to take to achieve them. A man is his dress—that is the vision of tailoring. A man without clothes is a clay mannequin. A man without art is an animal. Tailoring is the art, the art of converting a clay mannequin into a man.’
Holding my hand, he led me to a book laid out prominently on a table in his shop. It was called The Book of Cutting and Tailoring. He picked it up and touched it to his forehead and stood for a moment in veneration. Then again, returning to the poetical and prophetic style, he said: ‘But, alas, people go after fashions, not knowing the dresses ordained for them. The dresses th
at can put their fragmented souls together. Only this book knows it. And only this artist can make it. In our time, this tragic time.’
As in a ritual he again threw his hands towards the people on the road and cried, ‘Oh, you poor souls wandering in the wilderness …’
Though he was addressing the people in the street, he seemed not to see them. His eyes stared unseeingly into the distance and his mind into a world of revelations.
As I stood watching him in awe and with mounting unease, his voice came down gradually and finally died. I watched him shrinking into a still picture at the door of his shop; he walked back to his worktable, shoulders sagging. No longer were there the rhythmic movements of the feet and the dance of the fingers. Not an artist but the picture of an artist. I wondered if it were the artists reduced to two-dimensional images who were later hailed as prophets.
If he had been addressing the people out on the road, they had not heard him. They continued walking in the crowd, talking, gesticulating and immersed in their own affairs. They had no time for him. Even if they had no homes or direction, they seemed to be content with the way they were. Many of them had their desires and passions, and companions to share them with, it appeared. Was it this desire to be with those of our own kind that he described as going after false lights? In any case, I did not feel any revulsion towards those people at that moment.
I saw the tailor the next day. He was sitting on the steps in front of his shop. His hands resting on either side of him on the stone steps, his eyes vacant, staring into the distance.
I looked into the showcases of the shop. To my amazement, they were all empty. There was not a single coat or kurta or kameez left. It was a holiday and there were no assistants in the shop either. But he had kept the shop open, with the showcases empty.
‘What has happened, tailor?’ I inquired. ‘Have those people come at last in search of your works of art? Seeking homes, paths, desires, passions and mates? Those fragmented souls, the naked bodies?’
‘No, my friend, they did not come.’ The tailor rose from the steps and invited me inside. Pointing to the empty showcases one by one, he told me in a hard and mechanical voice, ‘Last night my creations, without exception, declared a revolt. Unable to bear the loneliness and emptiness any more, in the darkness of the night, all of them came down from the hangers and stood before me. Watching the shapes and roles I had accorded them growing larger than my wits, I bowed my head before them. I threw open the doors of my shop for them. What a satiating experience it is, my friend, to be a witness to our creations taking over the mission from us! Yes, each one of them has started its journey in search of human bodies, which would lift their sagging shoulders and make their limp limbs come alive. Out into the street! My shop has been emptied, my friend, without even a single customer visiting it!’
The tailor again took me to the table with the book. Touching the book to his forehead he opened it. As on the jacket, the title page also carried the name in large letters—The Book of Cutting and Tailoring—but I noticed that it did not carry the name of the author or the publisher. Like scriptures or holy books.
The tailor started turning the pages of the book mechanically as if to show them to me. I did not see anything in it other than what could be expected in a book of its type. There were pictures illustrating the cutting patterns for different types of dresses. An arm lay across a page as if barring my way. A leg hung down as if poised to kick me. And so on. For a moment I feared if these pages were resurrecting before me the people in the street he had been talking about, with their broken down and separated limbs. Then I laughed at myself; it was just a book of tailoring, giving instructions on the shaping of limbs for dresses …
He did not laugh. He acquired a profound expression devoid of feelings and emotions. Lowering his voice, as if speaking to himself, he muttered, ‘My creations have left me. My shop is empty.’
‘What is there to lament, my friend?’ I asked. ‘Your art is still with you. You can create them again.’
He shook his head, and said in his now familiar prophetic tone: ‘When the creations of an artist walk out of his workshop and start forging their own paths, the creator should take it as the end of his imagination, his path. My mission has ended, and my life is now in their hands … But do not be despondent. Tailors will come again. To discover the bodies, the souls … to dress them. No chasm will greet you on your path.’
‘Why should I be despondent? I find no gaping chasms in my path. What have I to do with all this?’ I asked in confusion.
He did not reply. He continued to flip through his book. Close to the end of the book, there was the picture of a sherwani on a page. A headless torso stood before me, arms hanging lifelessly, as if reminding me of the presence of an executioner nearby. Defiant, it stared back at its fate. The tailor closed the book with a bang.
The tailor went back to the door of his shop and sat down on the steps in the position in which I had found him earlier. His hands on the floor and eyes far away.
I don’t know what I felt at that time. I was somehow getting used to this man’s vagaries and prophetic—I did not want to call it poetic any more—arrogance. This time when he sat on the steps I thought it was not sadness but a kind of vacant indifference that engulfed him. I tried to interpret it as the satisfaction of an artist who had completed his work. Or of a prophet who had accomplished his mission. Were his eyes searching for his dresses that had left him, even now engaged in completing their mission on the distant road? I was inclined not to think so. He resembled more and more a manifestation of emptiness.
Why had he shown me the book again? Only this book and only this artist, that had been his stance last time. Today he had said nothing like that; in fact, he had said nothing. He had perhaps been asking the book what the role of an artist or a prophet, whose imagination or mission has ceased, should be. The headless and inert sherwani, on which he had closed the book, did not make any point to me, but it did leave me unsettled. I don’t know whether he felt it too, the way he had banged the book shut. But something he said remained in my mind and continued to puzzle me: that his life was now in their hands.
‘I will go now and search for the dresses made by you,’ I told him. ‘It is my mission now.’
The man sitting on the steps did not reply.
Why I foisted this mission on myself, I do not know. All the same, I walked through the streets looking for the dresses made by him. I was somehow sure that I would be able to recognize them among all the others. A kind of familiarity and closeness had developed between them and me.
Yes, there it was, one of his coats. It was floating in the air and, just as I spotted it, it jumped on to the shoulders of a man walking in the street. The man did not appear to notice and continued to walk as if nothing had happened. But something did happen, that too without his knowledge it seemed. He let go of the hand of the woman he was walking with and began to walk alone.
My surprise did not have enough time to die down. I spotted another dress, this time a Kashmiri phiran, beautifully embroidered. It draped the body of a woman and soon she too was walking alone, no longer with the man who seemed to be talking to her lovingly. The woman seemed unaware that this had happened.
There a long kurta with exquisite Lucknowi chikan work, the kind nawabs used to wear. I had admired it many a time in the showcase. The person on whom it fell was a short and frail factory worker who was walking holding his little son’s hand. The boy drifted away from him and the man straightened his shoulders, seemed to grow in stature and walked now as elegant as a tall nobleman. A double-breasted coat, which used to remind me of an advertisement slogan of a well-known textile company—‘for the perfect man in you’—seemed to sneak in from the side and captured its prey. It was a housewife. She instantly turned into a man, or became ‘the perfect man’. Coats, kurtas, jackets … the list went on.
Fear began to replace wonder in my mind. Is there a coat lurking somewhere, ready to devour me? To turn
me into something else in a moment? The white cloak of a cleric or the saffron gown of a sanyasi? An army uniform, or something even more dreadful?
All those people I had watched being captured by the tailor’s clothes had lost their identity, become something else. They had forsaken their friends, spouses and children, to walk alone. They had traded their position in society, sex and, who knows, perhaps even their thoughts and their minds. In one stroke, they had become lone travellers walking on a new path.
I ducked instinctively whenever I felt a touch on my back. I kept looking behind me. I did not see any of the tailor’s clothes. But I also knew that I would not see them. For their modus operandi was to lurk in the shadows and jump on the victims unawares.
Yes, that is what the tailor had proclaimed. He wished to steer the people towards a home and path and purpose different from their present one. A ‘better’ existence from the one they had. He wanted to manipulate their desires, aspirations and passions … well, I was not ready to accept a path or home or aspiration not chosen by me. I was sure the people walking on the road would have agreed with me. Who was the tailor to decide their fate? And yet, the moment those deadly costumes fell on them, they went his way, casting away their dear ones without even a whimper of protest. Maybe they would eventually find new partners with new passions and new paths. This was perhaps the art he was boasting of, the art that would make them happier, according to him. I could not think of it without a shiver of horror. But his prey of course would not feel the horror because in one stroke they had been converted into new beings without a past. Is that the magic revolutionaries and prophets wield? To some extent, perhaps artists and writers too? Behind those seemingly happy persons, shall I say charged now with a mission, there were those whom they had left behind, alone.
Book of Destruction Page 10