Ib's Endless Search for Satisfaction

by Roshan Ali

  Later at night as I lay in bed, Shaktidas Broom, who had been attending to personal problems all day, came and sat beside me. ‘Man,’ he said, ‘is monkey. But he naat know. That is problem.’

  The next morning, my uncle was gone and I never saw him again.

  * * *

  Every time Foreign Uncle left, there was suddenly another kind of quiet. He was a bit crazy too, sometimes. Stories floated around among relatives who had nothing else to do: Once he invited people for a party, then locked himself in the toilet till the guests left, perplexed. Another time, he made a stack of photographs and took photographs of the stack and made a stack of those. The word was that he was crazy anyway. But the relative who sometimes dropped in for tea usually made it a point to distinguish Appoos’s real madness to this pretend nuttiness that Foreign Uncle displayed. ‘He’s lonely, no,’ they said. ‘He can become depressed’; as if loneliness leads to sadness. ‘There is a tendency for solitary people to become depressed,’ said one distant, pale uncle with strange wrists who was a local doctor, but I didn’t pay much attention because only his friends went to him.

  Tea was served with a sense of occasion, but mild occasion because one must always be careful about the level of occasion and because on all occasions there is someone disappointed. Amma knew about disappointment. Tea was generally served with snacks; and was tea and snacks but just called tea. This was another domestic euphemism commonly applied and there were many others that I cannot recollect. Sometimes Amma, depending on her mood and independent of our appetites, made entire meals or just a few biscuits. Appoos ate without trouble, belching and enunciating every detail of his process. I found it difficult sometimes, but with Amma there was no way of avoiding. She never asked and was always serving and taking for granted that I would eat everything that was served. ‘You’re getting thin. Eat. Clean your plate. Or you’ll get pointy like barbed wire,’ she always said. And Appoos laughed a bloated laugh with things coming out of his mouth. As luck would have it, and maybe the universe had something to do with it, I never grew fat and never have, despite my natural laziness. Later, somebody said to me, ‘You think too much. All your food is going away to feed your imaginary persons.’ Such is my physical form.

  * * *

  As a quiet child, I had many dreams. I dreamt I would become a star-traveller, hopping galaxies, fixing dying suns, watering dry planets, freeing a people. I dreamt I would be an electric god, lighting currents in all the dark parts of the world, giving light to darkness, freshness to mouldy areas, with just a wave of my hand. And finally that I would become a singer of magical songs, with words that mended bloody wounds and a tune that calmed the worst of wars.

  Shaktidas was always supportive of all my dreams and even gave me suggestions on how to achieve them. ‘You start drawing,’ he used to say. ‘Drawings are path to greatness.’ And so I drew: I drew the stars and the planets, galaxies and black holes, even the universe, and me in a black astronaut suit, floating about, not to scale.

  When Amma found these drawings she was struck by how dull they were, but it amused her and she used to smile and go through them one by one. ‘Aren’t there more colours in the universe, babu?’ she asked me once. ‘Not visible to the human eye,’ I replied.

  She said, ‘So what? Why don’t you just colour them? They’ll look so pretty.’

  ‘I don’t want to draw lies. I want to draw the truth.’

  ‘OK, babu,’ she said, amused, exasperated, and tender at the same time. ‘You draw the truth, but what’s the point if the truth is dull? Isn’t there enough of that all around us?’ And as she finished the sentence her face fell, and she got up, letting the drawing slip from her hand on to the floor. She was back in her Appoos mode, the mode in which she took care of things. There was no joy in that mode. ‘Do the dishes later, OK? Ratna is not coming tomorrow,’ she said and went out, closing the door behind her, as if to preserve the relative happiness that was present inside my room. Shaktidas crawled out from under the bed and stretched out his back. ‘Need draw colours, Ib,’ he said, ‘or else you are sadden your mummy.’

  ‘It’s not my problem that she’s so miserable.’

  ‘She is mummy or not? Mummy are always son’s problem.’

  ‘If only I had a sister. She would take care of Amma and I could go on drawing things. And where am I going to get colours from?’ I cried.

  ‘There’s a shop by the bridge,’ Nooby said.

  ‘Nooby, where have you been? Do you think I should add more colours?

  ‘Look, Ib,’ said Nooby seating himself comfortably on the floor. ‘You know what I feel about your mother. I think she needs a good . . .’

  ‘Hey, yenough,’ Shaktidas said angrily. He glared at Nooby, who couldn’t have cared less.

  ‘Fine,’ he said shrugging his shoulders, ‘you asked for my opinion. No banging? Then, certainly, add some colour to her life. This is the only colour she has.’

  And then suddenly, Nooby disappeared. Right in front of my eyes; one second there he was, and the next, he was gone. I jumped out of bed and rummaged through the cupboard but he wasn’t there. ‘Shaktidas, where the hell did Nooby go?’ I asked and turned to look at Broom, but he was nowhere to be found either. The others too were gone and the room felt empty. Fearful of my life, I hid under the blankets and fell asleep. Later, when I woke up, it was the middle of the night and to my relief, Shaktidas was asleep on his favourite shelf.

  I took their advice to heart (perhaps because of their strange disappearing act), and the next morning I told my mother my immediate desire for colours. She pressed some notes into my small palm.

  ‘Take a left by the bridge, it’s next to the chicken shop,’ she said, ‘and talk with respect to Sharmaji. He knows your father.’

  I remember there was an unusual cold in the air that morning. But it wasn’t that unusual because it was the beginning of winter, and a cold was beginning to form in the sky. In the empty plot on my street a line of silver oaks stood up tall and straight, grey swaying sentries, shushing sternly at the breeze, made to watch over abandoned land. Below them a pig had made a nest and was leading a line of piglets across the road towards their home. Eager and afraid, they bumped into the back of their siblings, all rushing to catch up with their muddy mother. Further on, by the bridge, a mad man roamed the street, shouting at strangers. When he saw me he smiled and I hurried past.

  Here’s Sharmaji, an oiled, shapeless man, with dents in his fleshy arms like the ones on an overripe papaya. He wore a dull gold shirt, a bright gold chain and an even brighter gold watch, and watched a cricket match on a tiny television on a shelf, muttering occasionally to himself and complaining to his assistant—‘The state of Indian cricket I tell you, these days. Arre, Mahesh, look at this guy, yaar, he’s so bad. Why is he in the team?’ And Mahesh’s job was to agree—‘He doesn’t know anything. Kick him out.’

  ‘Somebody is paid, some match-fixing.’

  ‘Everything is fixed, sir.’

  They shook their head in exasperated wisdom.

  I called out and they turned and for a second they couldn’t see me. Then Sharmaji spotted my head over the counter and said impatiently, pushing something red to one side of his mouth, ‘What do you want?’ and without waiting for my reply, went back to watching the match, clucking with wise disappointment.

  Unfazed, I set out my list on the counter and waited. He picked it up, his eyes still glued to the screen.

  ‘Poster coloursh? Watercoloursh?’ he asked, his ‘s’s smooshed into ‘sh’s by that devil shit in his mouth (Appoos’s term).

  ‘Uncle, what can I use on paper?’

  He sighed and spat out a red blob that flew past my head on to the pavement. ‘Beta, you can use anything you want,’ he said, his turgid face finally turned towards me. ‘You want a light finish, use watercolours, you want solid finish, use the poster colours. But I suggest poster colours because they are easier. My children always use poster colours. My daughter is your
age only. How old are you? Yes, correct. My son, he’s older. But very good at studies. Where do you stay? Kamran’s son? What’s your name? Ib, what name is that? Muslim name must be. Me and Kamran, same college. What happened to him, yaar? I must come and visit.’

  Mahesh, the assistant, had meanwhile collected the colours and placed them on the counter. ‘Choose,’ he said grumpily.

  I did, pointing them out one by one with my finger. At the level of my eye, the colours were bright and solid like small skyscrapers. Red, blue, green, orange, yellow. The assistant wrapped them in newspaper and put them in a bag.

  ‘Thank you, uncle,’ I said after paying, but he paid no attention and Mahesh grumbled and waved me away. On my way home, the mad man was sitting on the roadside talking to himself. ‘Shruti said that, yes, Shruti said to go away. Where is Shruti, where is she?’ he was saying, over and over again. I hurried past and once beyond those tall silver oaks, I felt safe.

  * * *

  It seemed to my small and innocent brain that Nooby, Shaktidas and the others were going for sudden and short vacations. They would suddenly disappear in the middle of conversations, games, debates. I felt that maybe they were going to do some grown-up things, involving girls, beer and cigarettes, so I never brought it up. And they never spoke about it either because, I assumed, they didn’t want to make me feel bad about the whole thing. I was still a child after all.

  I was around ten when Nooby disappeared one day and never came back. It was one of those days, the kind of day that feels strange in retrospect, because our minds are made in such a way as to see connections where none exist and to see coincidence in randomness, meaning in meaninglessness. Such as it was, I had no feeling of strangeness on that day, but now after all these years, coloured by the sepia lenses of nostalgia, that melancholy of oldness, a yearning for lost things, all combined in fateful ways to produce the kind of feeling that makes you think the past matters more than it actually does. Such is the way that life revolves.

  It was a Tuesday, I think, but accuracy of memory has been replaced by feelings, and it might have been Wednesday or even Friday. A small meeting was under way in my room, and Shaktidas as always was taking the lead on various projects such as how to imitate lizards in the best way. ‘Do a clucky sound, man, chluck, chluck, but not like chigen,’ he was saying, sitting straight-backed and very serious. The topic was brought up because Nooby being an ant was worried about lizard movements, which according to him were increasing uncharacteristically for this time of the year. How better to chase away lizards than in their own language? Frauntfraunty was convinced he knew how to say ‘go away and never come back’ in lizard language. And so it went back and forth between Broom and Frauntfraunty and neither gave in. Broom’s irritation was growing every second and finally when he couldn’t argue any longer, he turned to Nooby to ask for a final decision. Where was Nooby? He was nowhere to be seen. Not in the cupboard either. Shaktidas grew concerned and said, ‘He is make many fight and all, sir, very strange.’ I nodded and agreed. He had been unusually feisty and absent alternatively. Usually he was back in a few minutes so we decided to wait, and meanwhile practise the spider stare, the only known way one could chase away those eight-legged beasts. But suddenly BringOverMarty began to cry and say a sad poem, ‘The one who is gone, is never coming back, the one who is gone, is likely in a sack, heading to the deathly kingdom, from where we all come, and then return, we are all doomed . . .’ In the usual way, his rhyme began to collapse towards the end, and Broom comforted him with a whiskery arm around his small shoulders. ‘Sorry, sir,’ he said finally, ‘Emotions are unstable these days, one day angry, one day scared, forgive me, sir, for I am weak . . .’ I cut him short and patted his head and we were all quiet. But Nooby never came back.

  We adjusted quite soon, but that emptiness when a friend goes away is never filled. All meetings thereon had a voice missing and sometimes we found ourselves waiting a little too long, as if unconsciously we still waited for Nooby to say something, something silly and dirty like he always did. With a lump in my throat it was always I who said, ‘OK, let’s move on’, and I would look sadly at Nooby’s cupboard and wonder what happened to my strange little ant friend.

  Over time all my friends disappeared, one by one, into the darkness of the universe, without saying a word about their departure. Only Shaktidas, the wise one, hinted at it one night as we lay in bed. ‘Ib, you’re grown up now. You’ll have to do things on your own.’ ‘Why, Broom?’ I asked. ‘Adults need help, too.’ ‘Yes, from other adults you know. Not from small people like us.’

  ‘But I like you guys,’ I said. He smiled and looked around helplessly.

  ‘You have us now, and we won’t go anywhere if we can help it. But the world is a dark and dangerous place, and I don’t think we can last for long outside this room. Besides, things aren’t in our control.’

  ‘I’ll protect you guys, I promise.’

  Broom laughed. ‘Who knows, maybe you’ll be better off without me. The world is dark and dangerous . . .’

  It was the first time Shaktidas had spoken so clearly.

  In the morning he was gone and soon I realized that they were nothing more than figments of my loneliness, manifested as friends, but that was much later, when I was truly grown up.

  It was lonely without them, but I found I went outside more often now that I had no meetings to attend, no discussions to moderate. I missed Shaktidas’s wisdom, Nooby’s bad language, BringOverMarty’s songs and Frauntfraunty’s devotion, yet I saw more of the world, and learnt to see things differently, as a loner, and digest them into my mind. There was no one to cry to, no one to complain to, and this worked out well.

  TWO

  It is difficult to put a man into words. I have known many men, and some women, and some kids too; but it is difficult to put them into these tiny squiggly forms, whatever shapes you use. And it gets worse as the men become more men, greater larger men, deeper men with intense eyes and great manifestos and jurisdictions, with slanting opinions and strong ideas.

  One such man was my grandfather; a small in size man but who carried himself with great height, bald to a degree of polish rarely seen on scalp.

  Were you wondering how did we survive? With money, with food? It was Grandfather who provided for us, after Appoos lost his power of earning, and he made it felt that he was the provider, constantly. I haven’t mentioned him because somewhere I don’t want to, and yet I need to, because he was always there, like a background of dark clouds, scary, but the soil needed the rain and so you learn to live with that fear.

  He—Ajju, I called him—was not a reasonable man, and one could not put to bed anything with reason. Instead, to conclude a discussion or argument with this person, my grandfather (although arguments with him were rare, owing to the force of his character that somehow cut down feelings or urges of rebellion within the minds of his opponents), the wait had to be made for him to end the topic. He would typically perform this by tone rather than content: The weight of it, combined with the unspoken threat of stiffness and silence, quiet anger, unspeakable disappointment at anyone who maintained the opposing position, disgust, and a violent (by understatement) rise of his upper lip, would essentially end words and further discussion. It was as if disagreeing with him was unacceptable and that was that. An exclusive club existed at whose jokes Ajju laughed and for nobody else, but this was too, a strange kind of laughter, nothing in it suggesting enjoyment or good humour, rather a kind of approval. So it was that look of ‘I know’ that was most frequent on his round, clean-shaven face and it very often crept up to his turtle-shell bald head. It was the only scalp I have seen that seemed to know you were looking at it, and approved of this.

  When Appoos lost his ‘sensibility’ and was no longer a respectable constituent of this so-called structured but actually amorphous, this so-called amorphous but actually rigid, thing called society, Ajju began visiting more often, in his rigid army way, and would often call four day
s in advance, though he lived only an hour away. The phone, a hunky, maroon frog-like thing, screamed like a banshee and Amma in the kitchen, her back to me, would instruct me with her hand to answer it. Plans were barked through from the other end: Too quickly I was required to remember but I did, knowing and thinking forward to the consequences of error. And in his presence, errors were seldom made: Though this said more of minimum risk rather than maximum performance.

  When Ajju arrived, Amma was always inside her room so she wouldn’t have to face his at-once commanding manner, about cleanliness and how shoe racks ought to be arranged, and I was the little stick on which the torrent of his forceful manner would crash down. He was always irritated and annoyed and I don’t know what I ever did, though I know that it was never what I did, but somehow, was made to feel like it was.