by Roshan Ali
Grandfather had a farm an hour from the city. From the gentle hill beside the house, I saw the shadows of clouds for the first time, as they passed slowly across the green patchwork plain, spangling green farms and barren earth in amorphous patches of light and charcoal shade. The chiaroscuro of this scene in my mind is much clearer and the shadows much sharper perhaps than when I witnessed it and I remember the silhouette of Appoos’s face against that wide land despite him never coming up that hill. Ajju was the only one who came up the hill because Amma was afraid of leopards. ‘Many killings have been reported,’ she said. An adult was required for even this little adventure that I wished to have. In a discussion, it was decided that Appoos could not protect a child from a predator and by default then it was decided Grandfather would be the one. When we reached the top, he held me by the shoulder and pretended to give me instructions but it was clear that he needed to lean on something. I said, ‘Don’t worry, Ajju. You sit down. I won’t go far. And I won’t tell Amma that you left me alone.’ He bristled but his physical exertion had dissolved his pride and he nodded breathlessly. I had left Shaktidas and the others down below. I stood alone, looking through the dry lantana and feeling the crackling wind on my skin. The forest was on the right; a deep green line that curved gently from my hill to the common horizon. I began to walk, leaving Ajju’s bent grey figure behind and rounding a natural hedge of lantana and old gnarled trees that reminded me of old men. How nice it would be, I thought, to become a tree when you die, instead of just dying? And it was this thought of death that occupied my mind while my eyes were fixed and fascinated by nature and its reticent expression, the awesome silence from human voices and the occasional and remote bark of a deer or the whistling of a winged schoolboy. Finding myself at the edge of the hill (beyond was the land), I sat on a grey and rust outcrop of cold rocks.
Presently, a rustling became apparent from the lantana, and turning, I saw the yellow dangerous eyes of a leopard, set in a mottled and strong head, low by the ground. By the sides of his head, haunches rose—rippled and tight strung—and yet he only sat still, his eyes in a constant attentive anger, fixed on the slight form of a confused bipedal creature, and he wondered I think, what I was doing there. Enchanted out of fear and caution I rose, and walked a few steps closer and he scuttled backwards further into the bushes, into the shadows, till he was only spots of yellow in an otherwise green and brown mass with only his eyes that gave away the nature of this tangled beast to be more than just branch and twig. He watched me for a while longer, then slunk away and the shadows of the thin branches and little leaves on his golden-yellow fur melded with the dark of his spots, and he moved stealthily, as those dancing shadows flowed away, over and against the direction of his movement, till they dropped silently off his smooth back. Then there was nothing but the howling of the wind. I had suddenly begun to feel cold and noticed the attention of the hair on my arms. Later that night, we heard him once, as we sat around the empty fireplace and Amma looked suddenly at the bolts and clutched the torch that she always kept close. Of course I never told them, despite it being the most exciting thing I had ever experienced.
* * *
Grandfather was simple in a strange way, in the way that a monstrous creature is perhaps simple. Killer Croc terrorizing the sewers of New York City was simple; all he wanted to do was kill people, end Batman, perhaps motivated by some sense of revenge, but is it that simple to say, ‘such and such is my one motivation’? Hence, the monster can be seen as a simple creature, whereas us good people are complicated creatures, lost and confused among the wreckage of this modern life. Like that, Grandfather had simple motives: To be in control, to be wise, to be the one in the room who knows, to be the teller of the joke, the teller of the one story of the evening. One can think of this force in his attitude as a result of a violently random life, full of death and travel. But who are we to say what caused this or that? He had a great respect for the law, for the police, for the nation, and unconsciously hated the loser in every situation. For him the new India was industry and money and he didn’t have time, he said, for the whimpering of locals who didn’t want a factory here or a mine there. He was a great advocate of the greater good. Of course, all this was beyond me at that time, and for me all he was, was a man who ordered mother around rudely.
In the evenings, when he visited, Ajju sat in his favourite cane chair on a faded red cushion, while everyone else scurried around for dinner and for this and that. He had a way of conveying that he was waiting for things even without saying anything. When his evening scotch arrived on a small tray with a bowl of ice, he helped himself with an absent-minded approval and I remember Amma hurrying away, relieved that he didn’t scold her about the glass being dirty or the drops of whiskey on the tray. Sometimes, quite rarely, he spoke to me and it was always some advice and never a question, and to this day I keep in mind that the ones who don’t ask you questions, they’re the ones who probably should be asking you questions because you’re wiser than they are. But he used to say, ‘Ib, young man, the country is in a great big mess, and these bloody pacifists want to shut down the army. They are out of touch. Out of touch.’ His words possessed some strange wind that made one nod, a subtle but unmistakable pressure at the back of the neck that made me move my head. And he would say, ‘People who weren’t in the army have no idea about life. Go to the frontline, then you’ll see. They ought to take young men like you there to see the reality that the cities hide.’ But mostly there was only a tense silence, as everyone waited for Grandfather to say something.
Once in the late 1990s, one evening, Ajju was more silent, less disapproving. He had his drink, of course, once the guy in the mosque was done screaming, but there was less enjoyment and pleasure and instead some kind of relief as if he had had a rough day. Now, it must be said that my grandfather never had a rough day, such was his handle on things, the way he would catch the morning by the scruff of its neck and wring it till a purposeful, statured, sunshine bled through every pore of his body. It was unusual, thus, to see him slightly beaten down, as if the morning had shunned him a little, ignored his daily routine and went about things saying, ‘Hey, everyone’s having a bummer, dude, live with it,’ or something else with that customary callousness with which the weather and time go about things. I watched as he sat there quietly, and this quietness was different from the usual tense silence. Mom was worried: When someone you fear is being nice—or less scary—you feel even worse than normal, because you wonder what will set them off. This difference in their behaviour makes them unpredictable. She stood at the kitchen door biting her nails until she couldn’t take it any more and went to her father and crouched by his chair. ‘Papa, do you want something?’ she asked quietly. He moved the paper so it covered his face and said a little too loudly, ‘No, nothing, ma, nothing.’ It was all very strange. Was Ajju actually feeling sad? It was too much for my little mind, and so after a large glass of yellow milk, I went upstairs feeling exceptionally tired (which is perhaps why I remember this incident with such clarity).
I tried to figure him out that night as I lay in bed listening to the howls and barks of dogs. Maybe he was reminded of his friends who died in the mountains, high up in the snowy Himalayas. What creatures lived in the Himalayas? I knew nothing.
The next day, he was back to normal, stern, irritated, and we were all a little relieved. It was only a couple of months after that, one morning, when Amma, looking through some old pictures said, ‘Ib, you remember Mammu? See, this was the day they met in Delhi. They were together for forty-two years, baba. Imagine that! Forty-two years.’ Her voice trailed off into a sad silence and she looked up from the photographs and into some memories in the distance. So it wasn’t death that made Ajju sad, I thought, but some sad forgotten memory of him being happy. And perhaps it was this memory of happiness that made Ajju most sad, sadder than anything else.
THREE
Earlier I asked, ‘Where must I begin?’ Now I ask ‘Why?’ Th
ere’s no good reason, just an urge to say things, to describe things, to show some angles, and some light glinting off them, or some unexpected shadows where none should be.
And all this is nothing if not a description of my shape. I am thin, certainly, quite capable of not being seen, yet not so capable that I can disappear when required or large and looming when that is the need.
And it must be said that I was perhaps one of these strangely shaped creatures for whom time and space do not make much time or space, and this has left me irregular and broken and bent. While everyone around seemed smooth and aerodynamic (except my family), I felt always as if the winds of life, of the future, or the past were not so agreeable as they flowed around. But I have spoken too much already of matters greater than myself and the world around; perhaps that is for the end.
It strikes me now: Everything Ajju told me, I did the opposite. It was as if adulthood was something he had sparked in me, like water sparks a flower, and my childhood, small and weak anyway, disappeared like the tips of burning cigarettes. There was nothing I could do: Man came into me like darkness comes into the evening, despite some sun, and however much you want a few more minutes of daylight, it just comes. You can be clever and go inside, put on the lights, performing in a few steps and an action what man has done to nature. But of course, one needs to know where the switches are, the operation of them. This was knowledge I had not come upon yet. Only when we are old do we know why being young is nice. We are all children, if only for a brief moment, and spend the rest of our lives trying to be children again: In those papery light moments near a moon, near a tree by a river or a funny moment in a film. Now where have all the children gone? What happened in that middle section? So it was that I became a man without really trying, and found that it was something that had happened to me rather than something I did. And like darkness that makes the evening opaque, that makes air thick, Man-ness grew inside and made me opaque. Then I was an opaque man before the age of fourteen and never again was delicate or nice.
I enjoyed this opaqueness at first: It filled me with a tough cement, with a hard currency to trade with against the problems of life. Appoos didn’t bother me any more, I found, and Amma less so. And Foreign Uncle—it had been years since I had seen him—was soon a flickering memory. But soon, feeling strong at first, this thickness all went to my skin, leaving my insides empty. This emptiness I found later was a side-effect: this emptiness or an unjustified fullness that leads eventually to more emptiness. Shoulders and shoulders, thousands more, empty and opaque make up a city. No wonder they say cities are empty. And it was also around this time that I began to realize that I was smarter than all the adults I had known: this was the last straw of childhood, and it broke the small camel’s back.
As I grew, strange things happened, to my body, to the world. Planes hit buildings in America and thousands died. After that everyone was afraid of everything all the time. Things got stricter, I heard, everywhere and Muslims were suspects. Appoos was a Muslim. Would he fly a plane into a building? Was he a different Muslim from other Muslims? In school, they said, ‘Ib, you’re a Muslim because your father is a Muslim.’ And I said, ‘No, I don’t pray to Allah, how can I be Muslim?’
‘Who do you pray to?’ asked one of the big boys, whose face was oily.
‘God.’
‘Which god?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What do you say? How do you pray?’
‘I say, ‘Please, god, make my parents live forever.’’
‘Then you’re Christian, I think,’ said the big boy. The others nodded. But another big boy, a gentler one, who smiled at me sometimes said, ‘But you weren’t born a Christian, so how can you be a Christian?’
‘Isn’t your mother Hindu?’ asked another boy. I nodded.
There was a small discussion. Finally oily big boy put his hands up for silence. ‘Only god knows what you are,’ he said. ‘Because when you pray, if you say god, then you’re praying to Christian god; if you say Allah, you’re praying to Allah; and Hindu, if you say Ram or Ganesha. But if you say god and in your mind you’re saying Allah, then you’re Muslim. And if you’re born Muslim, then that is what you are. Only god knows.’
‘Which god?’ asked a meek fellow looking around confused.
‘All god is one,’ said someone from the back.
And so discussions like this were carried out often when my religion was brought into question. But because of this spiritual bipartisanship, I was never suspected of being a terrorist. And yet the bigger questions sometimes came to me at night and I would toss and turn thinking—who were these Muslims who wanted to kill people? And why do some Muslims not kill people? And why do some non-Muslims kill people? And why do some non-Muslims not kill people? The world was a scary and confusing place.
There was another Muslim boy in class who wore a skullcap sometimes, on Fridays and holy days. He was always quiet and someone said that his mother wore a black burqa and nobody knew what she looked like. ‘What about the father?’ I asked Biju, who knew everything.
‘The father wears shirt and pant only,’ Biju said.
‘Why?’
‘Muslim women wear like that only, Ib. It’s to protect the women from men who stare.’
‘Can she remove it if she wants to?’
‘Don’t question all these things, Ib. Shameem ma’am might be offended,’ he said softly.
So the Muslim women had two layers around them that made them invisible. One was the black cloth, the other, a dark taboo of speaking about it lest it offends someone. How hot they must feel, I thought to myself, with these two insulated layers keeping them hidden from the outside world.
I declared to everyone the next day that I was not of any religion, because everything about it was beginning to irritate me. You could ask questions, but as soon as the question began to hurt or poke or pinch or tickle, no more questions (and what is the point of questions that don’t sting?). Ma was thrilled because she too wasn’t very religious now after Appoos went mad, and considered it a waste of time and money. ‘If every priest became a gardener, and every temple goer went for a jog instead, the world would be a much better place,’ she said, when I told her. She made me my favourite caramel pudding that night.
‘Don’t mention it to Ajju,’ she said over dinner.
But I found that apparently religious people weren’t happy just being religious. They wanted everyone else to be religious too. This I found one morning when I reached class and the Muslim boy whose mother was covered in a black cloth came to me and pushed my books on the floor. ‘You are murtid,’ he said, spitting the word out like venom. ‘Shame on your family, shame on you.’
I didn’t understand what he said. But I could see on his face that it was something terrible. Never in my life, to this day, have I seen the face of a child so grotesque and hateful. A few others watched, waiting for a fight, but he went back to his desk and began to read. Every now and then he glanced towards me with hate and fear. I picked up the books and sat down, and realized my hands were shaking.
When I went home I asked Amma what he had meant. She was upset and said she would call the principal. ‘Ma, please don’t,’ I pleaded, ‘it’ll make things worse.’
She didn’t say anything and sat slowly.
‘What is it, Ma? What did he mean?’
‘It means apostate, someone who leaves Islam.’
‘But I was never Muslim,’ I said.
She sighed. ‘Religion and government,’ she said finally, ‘nothing is straightforward in these two things.’
‘I don’t understand, Ma.’
‘Neither do I.’ She laughed sadly and looked towards the room in which Appoos slept.
‘Even your father isn’t Muslim,’ she said. ‘He was an atheist before he . . . you know what.’
I nodded and felt for the first time pride.
‘Why didn’t you tell me, Ma?’
‘Why, Ib? Are you an atheist?’ she asked,
and in her voice was surprise and then gentle mocking.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘but religion is the worst. I’m not any religion.’
‘Good, babu, religion only leads to suffering. It’s a horrible thing.’
She had made fried idlis and I ate in silence thinking of what Appoos would have been like if he was normal.
* * *
There was a great deal to wonder about, about the world. My small mind felt bulged and swollen sometimes when I came across some amazing facts about the universe. No god would have created such a large wasteland of blackness and non-living things. It was larger by a billion times what the holy books said. But not only in the sky, in the earth and in the soul. There was too much to know, too much to unknow, too much that could not be known, at least not in my lifetime. Where did worms go? What were the birds thinking? Why do dogs serve so faithfully? Why are we here?
These things kept me awake at night because it all seemed too fickle, so coincidental, so precarious. But man was his own safekeeper, his own guardian. Otherwise the universe would have killed us a long time ago. So in man must we believe and give strength to the institutions of man, and not god. The mind of man had made so much, and yet everyone talked only of how much he had unmade.
This troubled me in school. We were constantly told how bad man was and yet nobody looked around them and saw the wonders. Without us we wouldn’t be here. One day in class someone said, ‘We should wipe ourselves out with a nuclear bomb,’ and he didn’t realize that that would mean he would be dead and couldn’t see the benefits. The small-minded were often like that. They reacted with great passion and with a sense of justice, but little else and no thinking. This was harmful in the long run. These people let their ideas and convictions shape reality rather than the other way around, and by this they were deluded and harmful. The world was full of them, and I would see one every day in the paper, or in school, on TV. But people admired them because they had the most seductive ideas that appealed to fickle-minded humans, and made them feel good. Very few had the strength to see things as they were because things as they were didn’t let you sleep.