Half a Rupee: Stories

by Gulzar

  ‘Fifty rupees was a princely sum in those days!’

  I was still curious about the story, worried where Wazira had taken me.

  ‘He took you to his house, to flaunt you to his grandmother. Wazira was an orphan. His parents had been trapped in a snowy avalanche—they were never found. Not even their dead bodies. Wazira had to stay many a night in the hotel on night duty. And whenever he returned home in the mornings, his grandmother would get after him, she would hurl a thousand angry questions and insults at him. He would try to pacify his grandmother by saying that he had got married and had spent the night with his wife. And that he even had a little daughter with her. And because of his grandmother’s horrible mood swings he was scared to bring her home.’

  I was beginning to like Wazira, albeit just in the quiet of my heart. He had that quaintness, like the heroes in fairytales that grandma told you. His story too seemed like a fairytale to me, then. And it seems like a fairytale even now. I felt that fairytales were born in Kashmir and they trickled downwards to the plains only to avoid the icy Kashmiri winter. Sometimes it occurred to me that had Wazira really ran away with me, I would have grown up in Kashmir. But I did not cherish the idea of separating from my folks in the story.

  ‘Did Wazira ever come back?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, he did. He begged our forgiveness and apologized profusely. We hired him all over again but we never ever again let him take you out for a stroll.’

  I found an album in the house. It was filled with old photographs, but Wazira was not to be found in a single one of them. I found photographs of mine clicked in Gulmarg, Yusmarg, Pahalgam and Chandanwadi—nothing less than illustrations from old books of fairytales.

  It was only when I was reading philosophy in college that I asked Mom, ‘Shall I go visit Kashmir in these holidays?’

  ‘Don’t you see the news on TV? These Kashmiris have wreaked havoc …’

  I was still in college when I saw it on TV—there was some cricket match being played and Kashmiri youths were shouting anti-India slogans. There were also a number of turbaned Sikh youths in the sloganeering crowd.

  And then an incident happened—the terrorists abducted the daughter of a Kashmiri minister. I was about to blurt out that he must have taken her to meet his grandmother but just stopped short—Dad was furious. He was pacing up and down the room and he suddenly turned and roared, ‘They are making deals with the terrorists. They are exchanging the minister’s daughter for captured terrorists. What on earth do they think they are doing? Would they have agreed to this exchange if the kidnapped woman was an ordinary man’s daughter? Would they? You could have gone and yelled into their ears but they would not have registered a single word. All they would have done is issue statements: “These are disturbed times”. Have they forgotten what happened during Partition? What they did to us during Partition? Treaties are being signed. Deals are being made with the terrorists!’

  Mom asked, ‘Then why don’t they confront Pakistan? They are the ones that are pulling the strings of these terrorists. They are the ones who are doing this.’

  I heard Dad acknowledge for the first time, ‘Our people are no less! To hold on to their power these people keep swapping sheepskins.’

  I felt bad. God alone knew why—neither Mom nor Dad was from Kashmir, and yet …

  Somewhere around this time, I saw a Kashmiri youth in Dad’s office one day. He was radiant, handsome. He was looking for a job. Dad asked, ‘Where are you from?’

  The poor guy managed to say in a mousy voice, ‘From Kashmir, sir; but I am no rioter; I am no terrorist.’

  Dad dismissed him saying, ‘Call on me again. Right now, there isn’t any vacancy.’

  I knew Dad was lying. He simply did not want to entangle himself in officious, mile-long inquiries. Those days the police would keep a sharp eye on all the Kashmiris who had come down to the plains from paradise. Forget Kashmiris, if people so much as heard you say that you were a Muslim, there went your ability to get a job or even rent a place.

  Once when Dad was in the hospital, recuperating, I bumped into Dr Basu, our family physician. After that the talk turned towards my marriage. I was nearly done with my studies: it was my last year at university and I had already started working as a rookie reporter with Hindustan Times. When Mom asked when I planned to get married, I quipped, ‘I will! Provided he takes me to Kashmir for our honeymoon!’

  ‘Kashmir! No!’ Dad dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. He did not say anything more; not because he did not want to—his doctor had advised him not to exert himself. I looked at Mom and said, ‘You were the one who said that the idea of me was conceived there.’

  Dad waved his hand in the air and went away. That was the end of the conversation—he died soon after.

  And now, after so many years, I was off to trace my roots. My heart was bouncing like a rubber ball inside my ribcage when the plane landed in Srinagar. And the moment I stepped out of the airport, I saw what I had not seen anywhere else in India.

  The first thought that came to mind was: Has the war started? Has Pakistan attacked us? There were more Indian soldiers than Kashmiris on the locked-down roads of Srinagar. Everywhere there were tanks, trucks, guns, checkposts; there was a bunker on every road, and platoons of soldiers. The bus that I boarded from the airport to the city was stopped three times. And thrice did gun-toting soldiers step on board, rifling through the passengers’ belongings, their gaze piercing us all.

  ‘Whose is this?’

  ‘What’s in this?’

  Finally they stepped down. The bus trundled ahead.

  By now I felt as if my breath was being stifled. When the bus stopped for the third time, a soldier, before alighting from the bus, looked at me through rapacious eyes and barked in crude Hindi, ‘Where the hell are you off to, girl?’

  I did not like the way he addressed me. I spoke in English, in a tone full of scorn, reserved in India for talking to social inferiors, ‘What do you mean where am I going?’

  He grunted ‘Hoon’ and turned and stepped off. I figured he did not understand English and was too proud to admit it. But nobody else on the bus said anything.

  I was looking for a regular place to stay, and I was hoping that I would find something around Dal Lake. If I had money I would have stayed at the annexe in Oberoi, I thought.

  The surface of the lake was covered in layers of green mulch and the rotting roots of unwanted weeds. A few houseboats were still afloat, anchored at the shore—frayed, dilapidated, praying for a watery grave in the waters of the lake that they had always called home, rot and decay their only companions.

  Time and again, tears would well up in my eyes. And, frustrated, I would wipe them away and curse myself, ‘Where on earth is your engraved walnut bed now, eh?’ My voice choked on my own tears. I did not hear my normal voice ever again after that.

  Nobody was willing to put up a single girl in a lodging house or a hotel. Neither my English nor the Hindustan Times identity card in my purse was of any help. And seeking the help of the police or the army would be useless. The moment you were associated with them, the locals were sure not to even look in your direction.

  Khalil trotted off in his Kashmiri as he put my luggage in his auto, ‘You are alone, memsaab. Kashmiri too scared of Hindoostani fauj. They grab anybody from the street and march off …’ he paused, ‘and that person is never ever seen or heard of again … God knows in which jail that man disappears.’

  All the pent-up anger inside him was finding vent—firing like the exhaust of his auto. He kept on venting. Perhaps he wanted to burn out all the diesel inside him. ‘Nobody is going to keep you in a otel—the army would get an excuse to raid the premises and will grab and take the otel-wallah away. If the otel-wallah is old, they will not take him away. But they will take away either his young son, or young son-in-law, or his young banja, batija … any of his young relation will do. They have their sight on the youth of Kashmir. They simply want to wipe the youth of
Kashmir away …’

  His voice was becoming increasingly raspier. Suddenly he stopped his auto at the turn of a lane and looked in my direction, ‘What do you people want, enh? What do you want from us? Why don’t you just let us be, leave us on our own? Now even our green has turned red … the grass growing on our earth has become red … enh …’

  His voice became choked, like mine. I sat there with my palms covering my face. I had never ever felt so ashamed of being a Hindustani.

  Khalil picked up my suitcase and entered his aunt’s place. Khalil’s aunt, his bua, was a wise old woman, well past her middle years. ‘You put up here, sister, with my aunt,’ he said. ‘I shall come every morning and take you wherever you want to go … but you must never venture out alone again.’

  He left, wiping his tears with his hands, tending to his pain. God alone knew what sort of memories he was nursing, God alone knew what old wounds had opened up again. He neither asked for money, nor talked about the rent.

  But I did not pay heed to his words. I patched up something to tell the aunt and left the house on my own. The house was not far away from Dal Lake. Walking by its shore, I soon found myself in front of the Oberoi Palace. The gates were pulled shut, and barbed wire fenced its boundary as far as I could see. I pulled through the barbed-wire fence and entered the complex. A few roosting birds fluttered their wings, cooed something to each other. A few flapped their way up the trees and perched on the branches. They were very alert. I slowly made my way towards the palace.

  From the roof of the main building hung huge sheets of tarpaulin that reached the ground. The hotel was closed to the public. Part of the complex had been taken over by army troops, who had started their army kitchen. The veranda was overridden by mildew. A stench invaded my nostrils; I covered my nose with a handkerchief. The annexe was shut. The lawns were covered with rubble and rubbish. And the two chinars stood with their heads bowed, hands tied—like slaves. There was a pronounced droop in their shoulders. They looked old. I began to feel suffocated.

  I returned to Bua with my breath stifled; she fixed me a bed in the mezzanine.

  I got up early in the morning with the chirping of children. It was the first time that I had heard a happy sound since my arrival. I got up and threw the window open. It looked onto a graveyard where children were playing hide-and-seek. Amongst old chipped tombstones were numerous fresh graves—the mud on some still seemed moist. Perhaps this was the safest place for the children to play. When I came down Bua was nowhere to be seen. But she had laid out a bucket of water for my bath. A cake of soap and a fresh towel were kept at one side. I was not used to bathing with cold water—but then this wasn’t a hotel. I cupped the ice-cold water in my hands and slowly began to rinse myself. I tried to get my body acclimatized to the chilly water slowly; it was pretty cold. Then I began to wash myself. After I had poured a few mugs of water over my body, I got used to it. I only felt cold when I stopped pouring the water over my body. As I kept bathing, slowly, all the pain, all the complaints got washed away.

  Bua had a young son, Aziz Ali. He was learning computers, till the police came and hauled him away from the shop. It was rumoured that he had met up with some Pakistani—it was the Pakistani who had given him away. Nine years had passed and still there was no news of him. Whenever someone was killed in a police encounter, Bua would go and have a look—sometimes at police stations, sometimes at the morgue. Whichever jail she could get the address of, she would go looking there for her son. She had been to all the jails in Kashmir. Her hand still hovered over the fame of hope; she kept burning; she refused to believe the worst. Her tears had all dried up but she still kept crying. I told her, ‘Bua, maybe he’s gone over to Pakistan, or maybe he’s in Tihar Jail.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘In Delhi.’

  Her face turned ashen. But I could not bring myself to tell her that maybe he was not alive any more, maybe he was dead.

  One day, much before daybreak, the police cordoned off the entire area. Military trucks parked on all four sides. Searchlights were sprung atop two trucks. A megaphone boomed. People were ordered to get out of their houses and assemble in the graveyard. The military was to search all the houses. People hurried out of their houses within minutes, as if they had rehearsed for this event a number of times. The sun came out and climbed halfway across the sky. Hungry and thirsty, people stayed put in the graveyard for hours without protest, without any complaints. The search of their houses continued.

  At midday, I gathered some courage and spoke to the army colonel in English. He permitted me to take Bua home. She had become feeble with hunger and thirst. When I returned to the graveyard after leaving Bua at her home, there was suspicion in the eyes of the people: a sort of hatred and a kind of strangeness. I went and sat in a corner of the graveyard, a little unsure of myself.

  Just before nightfall the military police pulled the curtain down on its own drama. People began to return to their houses. When I returned to Bua’s house, I found the door locked and my suitcase and belongings kept at the door. I dragged my suitcase after me and came to the main road and sat down against the wall around the lake’s shore. I had lost all hope when a stranger stopped and accosted me, ‘Where do you want to go, memsaab?’

  I tried to affect a smile.

  ‘I want to stay in a houseboat for a night.’

  There are no guests any more in the houseboats, memsaab. There are no houseboats any more. But there’s a man … he lives on one … it’s his home.’

  ‘Where?’

  He pointed into the distance.

  There … that’s Wazira’s houseboat.’

  ‘Whose?’ I sprung up on my feet.

  ‘Wazir Ali is his name. He’s an old man.’

  ‘Will you take me there? I will request him, plead with him; maybe he will let me stay … for just one night.’

  A little taken aback by my request, he half-heartedly picked up my suitcase. ‘Come then … but he does not accept guests … actually, nobody comes any more.’ He kept talking as he walked. ‘Forget the guests, memsaab, even the birds from Roos … and from where not … they used to come … now even they no longer come over to the lake.’

  I did not know why but I was sure that this Wazir Ali must be the same man: the one who had stolen me when I was an infant, rather who I wished had stolen me. But as it turned out, this Wazir Ali was someone else. Even then he agreed to let me stay in his houseboat for the night. He even spread out a bed for me—on the floor. There weren’t any engraved, chiselled walnut beds.

  The next day I returned to the airport. Three times, at three different places, they opened all my luggage and rifled through my belongings. They poked through my bras and panties. A pain shot up through my chest, again. Everywhere there were two queues, two separate enclosures, for body searches. The way these women felt me up, it seemed they were lesbians, all of them. In the third enclosure they made me take off even my shoes and socks and felt me up all over again. And then they paused in their search and asked me, ‘What’s that?’

  I had to say, ‘A sanitary pad. I am chumming.’

  It was then that I heard a voice rise from the adjoining enclosure. A little choked but familiar.

  ‘Who’s in there?’ I asked, and nearly pushed my way into the enclosure. Right in front of me stood Bua. A ticket to Delhi flapped in her hand. The drawstrings of her salwar were untied and they had fallen around her ankles; she had pulled her shirt up and was screaming in a string-thin voice, ‘This is the only place left to search … have a look … take a proper look!’

  She clamped up when she saw me.

  ‘What kind of a country have I come to? Is this really my country?’

  And then she flopped down on her salwar gathered at her ankles, all life draining out of her.

  Khalil’s scream began to ring into my ears. ‘What do you people want, enh? What do you want from us? Why don’t you just let us be, leave us on our own? Now even our green has turned
red … the grass growing on our earth has become red … enh …’

  For Humra Quraishi

  V

  It never shows its face and never stops blubbering

  A thought like a cricket, in the dreary silence of my soul

  Keeps chirping—

  Farewell

  There was neither a name nor an address, just a simple note—scrawled in a running hand—in a simple envelope. Had Guru not picked up the doormat on opening the door, the envelope would have stayed unnoticed. He was afraid of the doormat being stolen. So he would pick the mat up from inside the door and drop it on the other side of the threshold when he came back to the room. Whoever had pushed the envelope under the door was not aware of this and the letter had slipped underneath the doormat.

  Scrawled on the piece of paper were the words:

  Yang Sui has come from Vietnam. Wants to meet up with you. We will be at Shyamal’s place. Do come and bring your newly written poems.

  Poems? Try as hard as he could, Gorakh Pandey could not fathom any meaning out of this. Poems? What poems? He wasn’t a poet. Nor did he know of any poets in the hostel. Who was this letter for? He scanned it again, inspected the envelope: there were no giveaway greetings, no tell-tale salutations; no, not even a name on the envelope. He folded the letter and slipped it into the pocket of his trackpants. He groped under the bed for his sneakers, slipped them on and left for his run. That’s what he did every morning—walked out of the hostel, cut through the college maidan, crossed the highway and ran two laps of the park on the other side and then back to the hostel. It was a matter of habit with him. And this kept Guru—a name his friends had fondly taken to calling him after the nickname of his namesake, the infamous Naxalite Gorakh Pandey—ft as a fiddle.

  A couple of days later, the same thing happened again. Guru came back from his run and began to clean his room. He picked up the doormat to dust it and found another letter. It was just like the earlier one: a simple note in a simple envelope. This time too, the letter betrayed neither a name nor an address, not even a date. There was a salutation though, perhaps a lingering whiff of a relationship: