Love Curry

by Pankaj Dubey

  And then he had the most brilliant idea. Rishi re-entered Ali’s room and picked up the books that Zeenat had stacked on the desk. It wasn’t there. He tried the cupboard next, and found it in the drawer. Abbu’s book of recipes. It contained his treasured balti chicken recipe. It was Ali’s heartbeat. Rishi read it once … twice … and thrice. Yes, he could make it. He had to. He had to bring the smile back on his friend’s face.

  It was late evening by the time Ali and Shehzad came back. Ali was not hungry, and even Shehzad’s stomach was surprisingly not growling tonight. But the balti chicken changed all that. The surprise was too good and tasty to sit on the table for long. Ali hugged Rishi and told him he would never forget this.

  ‘It’s almost like having your Abbu here for a few hours, on a visitor’s visa,’ Shehzad told his Pakistani housemate in a lighter vein, trying to lift the mood in the house.

  The trio sat in the hall all of that night, listening to Ali talk about Abbu, Haji Sahib, Ammi and Lahori shaan. Before they slept, Shehzad etched a small bowl of curry on the wrists of all three. Curry was what had united them. A tattoo of love curry marked on them forever.

  13

  Zeenat returned home to a table laid out for dinner. Not feeling hungry, she locked herself in her room and shut out the world. Mullah knocked on her door a while later, but she was not in the mood to answer and sent him off from behind the closed door. All she wanted to do was to sit by the window and count the stars tonight. Something told her doing that could help her sleep. And yes, Don Williams too. His music lulled her to accept almost anything … But I believe in love … I believe in music … I believe in magic … I believe in you …

  A wild flower, she had blossomed in the tinsel world of dreams and drama spun by Mullah and Fiza for their one and only child. Death, denial and post-truth were words that were somewhat new to her. She was growing up now. But was one day—one night—enough to grow up?

  I’ll never be in love again

  My poor ol’ heart will never mend

  Oh, I’ll find someone to hold now and then

  But I’ll never be in love again …

  Mullah went back to his wife in a daze. His baby was an adult today, eighteen years old, and she was already shutting him out. He felt lifeless. She was his oxygen, the one who kept his heart pumping.

  Fiza gathered him in her ample warmth and rubbed his neck and shoulder to keep the circulation going, massaging his temples to relieve the tension. ‘Let her be,’ she told him. ‘Kids are like this … they need space to grow.’

  Mullah had been telling himself the same thing. Yet …

  Meanwhile, lost in the lights in the sky, Zeenat was searching for that one star to talk to. Her heart was overfull, but the vast sky gave her little solace.

  Ten houses away, the boys had so much to tell each other that the night seemed short. ‘It’s the same in India,’ Rishi let out after hearing Ali’s Lahore story—featuring joint families, inheritance issues, bossy parents and interfering relatives.

  ‘Exactly!’ agreed Shehzad. ‘In fact, it’s shocking how uncannily similar we are even today.’

  ‘Yes, it’s uncanny!’ Ali agreed, nodding in a daze.

  ‘If we were one country, no one would have the balls to touch us—no one!’ Rishi was now galloping off on his own track. ‘A superpower we would be.’

  ‘Getting visas on arrival … here, there … and everywhere!’ A hundred emotions flitted through the Pakistani’s face as he said this. Staring into the blackness of the night, he declared in a louder voice, ‘We then wouldn’t have needed their damn work permits. There would be enough to do at home.’

  Shehzad sat up excitedly.

  Rishi now couldn’t resist teasing his lazy housemate. ‘Our Bangla boy is so powered by the idea … think what will happen if his idle bones start working for us too.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ali. ‘He alone would raise our GDP by two per cent.’

  Brushing off his housemates’ ribbing, Shehzad said, ‘Just think, what a cricket team we would have.’ The Bangladeshi’s eyes were shining. ‘Kohli, Misbah, Dhoni, Shakib Al Hasan, Afridi, Mortaza …’

  ‘Stop!’ Rishi gagged him with a cushion. Shehzad could get really high on cricket.

  ‘Okay, okay! It’s not just cricket. Think—your Kashmir would also disappear.’

  Rishi stared at him, unblinking. Had the tattoo boy finally lost it?

  ‘I mean, your fight over Kashmir would disappear,’ the Bangladeshi clarified.

  ‘Yes,’ Ali murmured, liking the idea. ‘Our defence budget would get halved. And our military strength … it would triple.’

  ‘The whole of Indian Ocean would be ours,’ Rishi added, feeling powerful already. ‘Our joint navy patrolling the waters, making the dragon go green.’

  ‘China!’ Shehzad tittered. ‘The Asian top dog will forget to bark.’

  Rishi agreed. ‘The West will fear us and not Beijing then.’

  With stars in their eyes and warmth in their hearts, the boys kept talking, thinking and dreaming big. It saved Ali from dealing with the gnawing emptiness within.

  ‘The world will queue up to do business with us!’ Rishi was zooming into heady times.

  ‘We’ll set up a new spice route,’ the Pakistani chef proposed. ‘Running through the whole of Central and West Asia, envied by every country in the world.’

  The Dhaka boy clapped and cried out, ‘Brilliant!’

  ‘Think,’ continued Rishi, winking at Ali as he spoke, ‘about the ISI and RAW getting together! Then we’ll get too wily for the world.’

  The Pakistani could not stop himself then. He laughed heartily. A star shone brighter in the sky, saluting the friendly warmth on foreign soil that was lighting up a grieving heart.

  ‘And that Security Council seat you’ve been begging for,’ Shehzad said to Rishi, ‘they’ll offer it on a platter!’

  ‘Sahi farmaya, janaab,’ Ali patted Shehzad on the head. ‘When hard-nosed netas from New Delhi and our suave diplomats team up, they’ll bully the world to clinch us the best deals.’

  ‘Your Taslima can ratchet up the volume for this,’ Rishi pointed out to his Bangladeshi mate.

  Yes, thought Shehzad. An activist who had not cowed down to bans or fatwas in Bangladesh or West Bengal; such a voice when it spoke for coming together of nations, it would mean a lot. The mention of Taslima Nasreen took Shehzad to Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam. ‘It’s not just about power. When our skies are one, even art and literature can bloom, wild and abundant.’ His eyes became dreamy as he spoke. ‘Bangla will work in concert with Urdu, not because it has to but because it wants to. Our new literature has much to gain from Urdu heritage. And Tagore—he has so much to tell everyone. Just like Nazrul.’

  Rishi and Ali stared at their tattooed housemate, struck by his depth and vision. Shehzad had this way of surprising the hell out of them sometimes. He was generally so laid-back that when he chose to shine, he made them go flat, puncturing their egos totally.

  Talk of art led to Bollywood, making Ali wistful. He was addicted to the latkas and jhatkas and over-the-top dialogues so typical of Bollywood. ‘We’ll get Karan Johar to shoot movies in Karachi with Bangladeshi heroines.’

  ‘Our Bappa Mazumder can sing for SRK!’ That was Shehzad.

  ‘And your writers can pen some real content for our TV channels,’ Rishi proposed, warming up to Ali’s idea.

  Was this even possible? Could their countries come together like they themselves had, and overturn history? There was so much baggage, so many wounds and niggles. Could they overcome it all in one day? Would their governments let them? The three sat thinking, going quiet all of a sudden.

  What made it so impossible? Their hearts were in the right place. And yes, they did have a shared identity. In fact, a Pakistani from Lahore felt more in common with an Indian from Punjab than he did with a Muslim from Iraq. No doubt there were many hate-mongering people for whom it is a business to divide people. Unfortunately, they
are the ones who walk the corridors of power or preach from religious pulpits. But what about the masses? Did they actually subscribe to the hysteria whipped up by their leaders and the media and the religious brokers? Were they really so gullible that they would harbour permanent hatred? It was a loaded question, pressing all three to look deep. But the answer to it was right there, staring them in the face.

  ‘Here, in London, what does your border mean to you?’ Rishi threw that to both Ali and Shehzad.

  ‘Nothing,’ replied Shehzad, without another thought.

  ‘Nothing,’ repeated Ali after him.

  ‘See, that’s it!’ The Indian had put in words what the two had a vague idea about. ‘Here, away from our mandir–masjid dealers and a jingoistic media, we’re okay. We’ve no issues—none that we don’t have with any other country in the world.’

  ‘In fact, we’re more comfortable with each other than with the Brits,’ acknowledged Ali.

  ‘Exactly! All that hate is pushed down our throats because it suits some people.’

  ‘Meaning … if we cancel out their noise …’ Shehzad paused as he said this, ‘we are one again.’

  Rishi and Ali looked at him and then at each other. The Bangladeshi had voiced what they too had concluded in their heads. They not only felt the same way, but they even thought the same way.

  ‘Ai, dost, hamne tark-e-mohabbat ke bavzood, mehsoos ki hai teri zaroorat kabhi kabhi,’ Ali signed off with Nasir Kazmi’s poetry which had been echoing in his head again and again that night.

  With the hope of a new tomorrow in their hearts, the three finally dropped off to sleep, casting off the shadow of death that had marred their day. That night, in house number 104, George Street, the borders of the subcontinent had truly melted.

  14

  More than the changed work profile or team dynamics, Rishi was taking time to adjust to the size of his new workplace. From the expanse of a car dealer’s showroom and garage, he’d moved to a single-room unit cluttered with people, paper and computer terminals. Things were not so easy on the eye—or foot for that matter.

  It was a tiny office with not many workers and the editor monitored most departments, including that of the new recruit. Not much happened at his desk, so Rishi was usually free to help others at their desks. He soon won many hearts and laurels—not for his stated skills or advertorial output, but for his steady and free-flowing advice. He doled out his pearls of wisdom to everyone—from the office boy to the illustrator to the editor. And his words worked—got them unruffled and raring to go again. Rishi had this inbuilt software that could analyse every change of mood accurately and help him to deal with it accordingly. His instant and out-of-the-box solutions were simple to apply and clicked for most people. The best part was he never squealed on anyone or judged them.

  Even the editor had benefitted from his counselling. No wonder she was finding it tough to fire him despite his not bringing in the ads he had been employed to get. But Rishi did try his bit to increase the revenue for the paper. He dialled almost every baba and mata in town, seeking appointment, on some pretext or the other. And managed to connect with around a dozen of them but came back empty-handed.

  The first one he met was a god-woman called Ma Anandamrignayani. Rishi spun tall stories to her, blathering on about how their desi readers were thirsty for divine guidance and were only waiting to be pointed to the right guru to achieve liberation. The mataji was almost hoodwinked into believing this sincere-sounding advertising executive. She was about to motion to one of her robed cronies to give him a cheque for a full-page ad when he did the unthinkable—he counselled her. Offering sage advice to a soul which was already supposed to be supremely enlightened was the ultimate blasphemy. Ma Anandamrignayani trembled with rage and cursed him for wasting her time. The cheque was clearly out of the question now. Instead, she asked him to check out of her ashram immediately!

  Versions of this story were repeated in his encounters with other babas and matas. The end result was a long list of travel expenses with no sold ad space to show for it. The editor would’ve pulled her hair out in frustration had she not been sporting a cropped cut that could not be pulled at. Rishi stood in front of her, his head bowed, feeling suitably ashamed and helpless. He kept trying to sooth her frayed nerves.

  She was about to fire him, and feeling awfully guilty about it, but she had a timely brainwave.

  ‘Rishi, you can’t stay in the ad department, you know …’ she began.

  He made it easier for her by nodding in complete understanding without meeting her eye.

  ‘However …’

  He looked up now. ‘However’ was a powerful word, carrying limitless possibilities.

  ‘You could do the thing you’re good at. Start a new column for the paper. On relationships.’

  Rishi went numb. Relationships? He’d been unable to keep his own, and she wanted him to sustain a column? Life was such a sick joke!

  ‘A simple, heart-to-heart question–answer piece it will be, counselling desi girls and boys. You’ll be their agony aunt. No, uncle.’

  He struggled to find his voice, clearing his throat multiple times. ‘But … ma’am … I’ve never done this … not this way … never wrote it out … I … I don’t think I could do it.’

  Her eyes had gone hard and glacial now. His hesitation was his problem, because she couldn’t give him any more leeway. ‘Well … it’s up to you. It’s this … or nothing.’

  Rishi took not a second to say yes then. He wasn’t ready to win the Asian title for being booted out a record number of times. The ad sales executive had a sudden makeover that morning—as an agony uncle. And he slipped into his new role as if he had been doing it all his life. He became an instant hit. The column was welcomed with a mountain of mails. The island seemed cluttered with confused and heartbroken desis. Hundreds of letters and emails arrived from all over London, seeking advice, comfort and clarity on relationship complexities. His was thankfully a desk job with no public interface. There was not even a byline announcing his name. Only an email address for correspondence. Such complete anonymity worked perfectly for Rishi.

  The agony uncle soon became the lifeline for every silly, serious and outrageous problem that plagued local subcontinental hearts; he solved them without fuss, deploying his patient voice and palatable formulae. From dating sob stories to mother-in-law antics, fantasy date analysis to the consequences of marrying a rich and cultured girl pockmarked with pimples—Rishi dealt with them all.

  A woman complained that while her father-in-law jumped to compliment her, the husband rarely noticed what she was wearing. ‘Return the favour to your father-in-law with added honey,’ he advised, ‘and make sure your husband and mother-in-law watch and hear you do it.’

  A man wanted to know if he should marry his girlfriend simply because she was handy and his parents were insistent. ‘Not just handy, she should be someone you can handle for long,’ he told him. As for parental pressure, he warned it was an Asian malaise that required immediate vaccination.

  Reassuring but forthright, his wry humour and non-judgemental tone made him wildly popular. He connected with his audience well and soon became a voice that the readers trusted. What he couldn’t do as an advertising sales executive, he managed now as a columnist—contributing hugely to the revenue of the paper by increasing readership manifold. The heart of Desi Beats now beat with him. A laptop and the cheapest brand of whiskey available were his constant companions in his march to glory.

  The British desis were smitten by this new agony uncle, but much to their agony, no one knew who he was. Even his housemates knew Rishi only as a copy editor. Guarding his new identity zealously, he went about his business quietly as usual.

  15

  Shehzad got up early despite not sleeping most of the night. It was only six o’clock. This was very unlike him, for he was a heavy eater and a sound sleeper. Not bothering to take a shower, he downed a black coffee and took off, not telling anyone wher
e he was headed.

  Ali saw him leave, and Rishi only heard him. Before the Pakistani could digest that it was actually the Bangladeshi that he was seeing up and awake at this hour, he had already left. The Indian assumed it was Ali messing around with his pots and pans, creating a racket at this godforsaken hour. The thought of Shehzad being up and about at this time of the day was something even his sleep-befuddled mind couldn’t conceive.

  Shehzad walked purposefully down George Street to the Tube station. He took the Metropolitan Line, overruling every instinct that begged him not to continue through to King’s Cross, St Pancras, Euston Square, Great Portland Street, Baker Street, Finchley Road, Wembley Park, Preston Road, Northwick Park and finally to Harrow on the Hill. Arriving at the station, he staggered out like a zombie, and walked and walked till he reached where he’d set out for—South Harrow Lane.

  Then he stopped. Despite coming this far, he was finding it impossible to move an inch further. His feet suddenly felt like lead and his palms went cold. It became a struggle to pull up his foot—glued as it was to the pavement—and take a step forward. Actually, it was going backwards—going back to a time and zone that he loathed. And yet, here he was. He pushed himself to go past every house till he reached number 121. Then he froze.

  The white gate of the brown-and-orange house was a border he simply could not cross. Not that anyone had stopped him there—no one but himself. He just stood there. Looking. Staring at the door. The windows. The spacious garden. So much stuff was hurtling down his mental plane, some blurred, some sharp and piercing. Like a roller coaster, it looped him high, then dropped him steep, plunging him through fuzzy spirals that terrified him. One thing collided with another, making him go crazy. His stomach churned. Shehzad wanted to scream but had lost his voice.