Half a Rupee: Stories Read online

  Kanchan reached for the fish-knife, fixed it between her toes and picked the hilsa out of the pan. She ran her hand over its slithery body to wipe off any stray drops of water that still clung on to it and then in one smooth stroke chopped it into three neat pieces: first she severed the head, then lopped off the tail and in the end split the truncated body wide down the middle. The water in the pan turned a deep red.

  ‘You were right,’ she looked at her husband. ‘The hilsa was pregnant. Look at this … it is stuffed with roe.’

  ‘Very lucky,’ Vibhuti smiled, and began to polish his spectacles. ‘Fry them separately … hilsa roe is a delicacy.’

  It was precisely at that moment that he heard the short punch of the doorbell, the thud of a falling newspaper, and the delivery man yelling as he pushed his cycle away, ‘Paper, babu!’

  Vibhuti got up and fetched the newspaper. The front page screamed out a big bold headline about the riots that had engulfed the city. There were a few photographs too. One photograph was of a girl. She had been pregnant; she had been gang-raped; and she had bled to death. In the photograph her mouth was slightly open, as if she was trying to say something. And her eyes were wide open.

  Her eyes looked like those of the hilsa in the pan.

  The Stone Age

  The bomb did not fall anywhere near the house, but still, the walls could not withstand the impact of the explosion. Mud walls—what could you expect of them? They shook, began to crumble, and within moments were reduced to nothing more than a heap of rubble. Nasir’s younger sister got entrapped in its dusty entrails—and that was the end of her. The elder one snatched him up in her arms and ran. They ran for their lives, ran outdoors without a veil. A gossamer of dust from the crumbling debris had veiled the streets. Nasir’s father grabbed his mother’s hand, scooped the bundle off the floor and darted out. They had bundled everything they owned in a small little fold of canvas and kept it ready for such occasions.

  Nasir was all of four then.

  ‘Abbu … this way Abbu … the firangis are on that side.’ He jumped off his sister’s lap, guiding them. He was blessed with far-sightedness. A jeep full of soldiers sped by, showering bullets. ‘Nasir saved us! Nasir saved our lives!’ His sister smothered him with kisses. His mother blessed him, praying for his share of misfortunes to fall in her lot.

  Nasir’s eyes shone with a strange brilliance. He had by now begun to get used to the life of the jungle; he had begun to forget what his own home looked like. They would wander for 2–3 months at a stretch and then return home, back to the pots and pans—a sort of return to civilization. They would take care of things, pick up the old threads of life, and then, once again, fee a few months later. There was a grandmother—all she would do was lie in the corner of the house like a sack full of straw.

  Nasir was only two years old when he first heard the roar of a plane and then the accompanying, earth-shattering sound of exploding bombs. His ears had begun to ache—his eardrums nearly split. The entire house had begun to shake and he was shivering, clinging to the bosom of his mother. His mother had him wrapped around her chest with a thick piece of cloth. The bundle with all their worldly possessions was in one of her hands and with the other she held on to Bano, his younger sister. His father clutched a small attaché case under his armpit. His lips were quivering in silent prayer. He had dragged his mother to the door and said, ‘Amma, just try … just do it. Take Allah’s hand in yours and let’s go … to the masjid.’

  God knew who his grandmother was cursing—his father or Allah. There was a sparkle in Nasir’s eyes even then. He had seen stars being plucked out of the sky and he had seen numerous suns exploding on the ground. An innocent question had arisen in his heart then: ‘Why is Allah so scary, so dreadful? Why does he keep terrorizing us?’

  Two years was hardly any time to understand the goings-on about you. But the eyes, they took in more than they could digest, to regurgitate and chew on things at a later age—like a camel.

  The masjid was reeking of blood. Severed hands, torn shoulders, bleeding necks—there were more men bleeding than ones unharmed. But for Nasir this was normal. Where Nasir was born, blood would rain more often than water from the skies. He would jump into a puddle of blood and splash his feet in it the way other kids jumped into puddles of rainwater.

  New sounds, new names fell upon his ears at the masjid. He was familiar with names of people from his tribe. But names like Russia, America, Bush, Traganoff, Greganoff, Firangi, Copter—they must have been names of people from another tribe. People living in another jungle—beyond those hills perhaps, from where all those flying machines would fly out, over which he could see the flying machines hovering, from where cannonballs of fire would shoot out at them … to wreak havoc in their lives, to break down their walls. He could never forget the sight of the walls falling on his younger sister. She was too young to even know how to scream.

  ‘Houses crumble, Abbu—then why do we live in houses?’ He was three years old when he had asked his father this question. In those days they were refugees in a city of concrete roofs.

  ‘Because outside it is raining fire, bombs are falling!’ his father had said.

  ‘Who drops them?’

  ‘They … those firangis … those who fly about in helicopters.’

  ‘Why do they drop bombs?’

  ‘Because they are our enemies.’

  ‘Are we their enemies too?’

  ‘Of course we are!’

  About a year and a half after that last question, he asked, ‘So can’t we too drop bombs on their hills?’

  ‘But son, we don’t have any helicopters!’

  ‘Then how?’

  ‘We have got fidayeens, don’t we? This is why we send fidayeen!’

  This was beyond Nasir’s comprehension. But he was learning. He made another deposit in his piggy bank—the word fidayeen. He would come back to it when he grew up a little more. He would fall silent but he would never be satisfied with his father’s answers. These questions would keep hovering like bees over his head. So he would go out and begin to work on his catapult.

  Nasir would remember his grandmother often. The few months that they had spent in the Aabnoosi Masjid in Kandahar, she had narrated to him a number of stories.

  ‘A horrifically tall devil kidnapped the fairy and imprisoned her in the twin towers in the sky,’ one story went. ‘He imprisoned the fairy in one tower and he himself lived in the other. He had clipped the wings of the fairy so that she could not even fly away from there. And the towers were so tall that no human could ever scale them. Whenever a crowd at the base of the towers would become unruly the devil would pluck a feather off the fairy’s back and flick it down toward the crowd. And the crowd would run amuck to catch the feather, wild in ecstasy, and cover a distance of thousands of kilometres trying to grab the feather.’

  ‘Even the prince?’

  ‘No! But what could a lone prince do? He could neither scale those towers nor could he fly …’

  Suddenly, the coin popped out of his piggy bank and he made a withdrawal against the deposit he had made long ago—the word came to his mind. ‘Fidayeen,’ he said to himself. ‘Why did he not send in the fidayeens?’

  He had finally grasped the meaning of the word. If his grandmother was here with him, he would have told her. He asked his father and he said, ‘Allah called her. She’s gone to be with him!’

  ‘Dadi too!’ And then he fell silent.

  God knew whether the minarets of the masjid were growing smaller or if it was he who was growing taller. He would squeeze himself out of his grandmother’s bundle and run up the stairs of the minarets like a rat running out of a sack full of grain. From the balcony of the minarets, he could see the entire city. From his vantage point, the city looked like a huge brick kiln—smoke snaking its way up from places at regular intervals. He took them to be the eateries—they must have been roasting mutton, they must have been skewering kebabs.

  Nasir was
growing up fast. His legs peeked out of his salwar, the sleeves of his shirt rode high on his arms. He would look at his grandmother accusingly as if she had filched the clothes from the neighbour’s clothesline. Once, perched on that very minaret, he heard the rumbling of the tanks. When they drove past the bazaar the entire ground quaked. He could feel the ground quiver even from atop the minaret. Must be those humungous mythical, evil rhinoceroses his grandmother’s fantasy stories were filled with, he thought, stumping through the earth with their snouts in the air—to spit out fire.

  And then there was another attack. The masjid was surrounded by those mythical, evil rhinoceroses. And they kept up their siege for quite a few days. Every night a few men would be herded out like cattle into the night. Like sheep and goats, on all fours, on their knees and elbows, they would go crawling, creeping, slithering through the lanes and escape to freedom across the maidan. Nasir managed to escape, too, along with his elder sister and mother. His father and grandmother had to stay still at the basement of the masjid.

  There was another village behind the hills—a village of mud houses. A few families took refuge there in a cowshed. The place was relatively silent—you hardly heard people here. Nasir’s father would periodically come, spend a few nights with them and then go back. And then once, he did not return. Nasir’s mother would often fall on her knees in supplication, trying to appease Allah, beseech him for his blessings, ask him for his indulgence to keep her family safe. Her eyes would be brimming with tears all the time. Nasir would lie on the floor watching his mother. He asked her once, ‘What blessings were you asking from Allah?’

  ‘I was asking Allah to keep your father safe, son!’

  Nasir kept lying there, kept looking at the vast expanse of the sky, and then softly asked, ‘Ammi, on which side is Allah on? Ours or theirs?’

  When he turned to look, his mother was long gone.

  One night, Nasir tucked his catapult into the folds of his salwar and groped his way back into the basement of the masjid through the labyrinth of tunnels. The scene that befell his eyes inside the masjid shook him to the core. He fell in a heap there itself. The entire masjid was in ruins. It was filled with rubble and when his eyes got accustomed to the darkness he could see the hands and feet of the dead people jutting out of the debris. When day broke, he began to move towards the main door. Then he saw a few men. They had wound their turbans around their noses and mouths. They had shovels and spades in their hands. Perhaps they had come to clean the debris. Nasir hid himself from them without being caught. When he came out he saw a cordon of people outside and he jumped into a truck parked against the wall.

  And then Nasir could feel halves and quarters of bodies and severed body parts raining down on him. He remained huddled in one corner of the truck under the human debris, afraid to move, afraid he would get caught. The sight was not all that unfamiliar. Half-torn, severed halves of carcasses, half-skinned, half-peeled bodies of animals he had seen arrive by the cartload at the local butcher’s. He stayed huddled in the corner of the truck. The truck began to move. God alone knew the shop of the butcher at which they would dump these bodies. Over the drive of a few hours that followed, Nasir either fell unconscious or fell asleep; he woke up when the truck emptied its load on a hill.

  He rolled down the slope; his fall broke only when he hit the bottom of the hill with a thud, and his eyes were forced open. He had fallen next to a huge pit that had been dug at the foot of the hill. The truck was returning after dumping its rubbish. The huge cliff stretched its head out in all its bald glory. Indomitable, the mountaintop reared its naked pate. He crawled out from under the inhuman remains of human lives. And like a scared vixen running for its life, he crawled up the slopes of the hill on all fours. Craters were open along the slope like mole-holes. He took refuge in a crater-like cave.

  From the top of the hill, it looked like a dumping yard. By evening the pit was full to its brim and they closed its mouth. That night Nasir slept in the cave. In the darkness of the night, he could hear some human voices slithering across the silent, sultry air. Perhaps there were people who lived in the adjoining caves. And then he saw a number of eyes glistening in the dark—wild rabbits perhaps. Nasir groped for stones. The catapult was still in the folds of his salwar; he pulled it out. He picked a sharp stone by touch and began to sharpen it against a bigger stone.

  One of his grandmother’s stories came to his mind: ‘In the beginning, humans carved stones into weapons. They would live in caves and hunt. Some tribes had fire. They were afzal, the blessed ones! They left the jungles and started to live in the plains. And they would travel huge distances and conquer foreign lands.’

  Nasir was grinding the smaller stone against the bigger one and was making himself a lethal weapon of stone.

  The Search

  They forced me to open my suitcase and went through its entire contents. I could understand their rummaging through my belongings. But when the male soldiers picked out the bras and probed them with lingering fingers, anger shot up my spine. What on earth could be hidden under a bra—grenades? Now, come on, I wouldn’t be smuggling grenades in the cups of those bras. I couldn’t contain myself when they picked up my lipsticks and began to inspect them closely. And when they started to take apart my lipstick cases, I lost it. ‘These are not bullets. They are lipsticks. Keep them. Load them if you can in your rifles! And shoot with them for all I care!’ I said.

  Shameless, he bared his ugly, yellowing teeth and said, ‘Gone are those days of the double-barrelled shotguns, madam. Now we clip hundred-cartridge magazines into our rifles.’ Perhaps the woman constable with him understood my sarcasm. She tried to explain, ‘We have to be extra-cautious on the Srinagar fights, madam. Come, come this way!’ And she invited me to step into a half-open curtained enclosure for a through body search.

  I was going to Kashmir in search of my roots: to look at my beginnings. However I am not Kashmiri. I just know this much: that my father and mother had gone to Kashmir and when they came back I had already taken root in my mother’s womb. ‘On those icy cold waters of the Jhelum, in a floating houseboat, atop a delicately carved walnut wood bed, when two pious souls were giving birth to a sacred moment …’ Mom would read out in a poetic style her entries from her Kashmir journal, relishing every single syllable, every single memory that her tongue could wrap itself around. She would regale me with stories of Dad in Kashmir.

  ‘He just didn’t know how to ride a horse. A stool would be placed next to the horse. Your father would first climb up on the stool and then the groom would coax the horse near the stool, and then and only then would your dad be able to get astride the horse. Even then, five times out of ten, he would fall on his face.’

  Dad would peep out from behind the newspaper he was reading and interject, ‘Don’t you lie, I fell off only once!’

  ‘Once? And what about the time when Your Highness, the Lord Pantaloon came undone!’ Mom was from Lucknow, and Dad from Kolkata.

  ‘Oh … now, come on … when the legs of the stool cave in, one does fall. It wasn’t my fault!’

  ‘Remember that one time when you found yourself atop the groom and not the horse?’

  ‘Now … come off it … that cranky horse just cantered away … just when I had lifted myself off the table. All right now … that’s enough.’ At this point in the conversation, Dad would turn to me, ‘Shonali, don’t you believe a single word your mother says. When I take you to Kashmir, I will show you how good a rider I am!’

  ‘Kashmir,’ Mom would sigh deeply. ‘Now that’s impossible! Who goes to Kashmir any more? Gone are the days when you could simply pick up your bags and head off to paradise, year after year. Strife’s in the air now. Bullets rend its quiet. Flowers no longer bloom there—death does!’

  It must have been around 1981–82, or was it 1982–83? I was still studying in school. The news on the radio made my blood boil. Who the hell were these Pakistanis to misappropriate our Kashmir? As if Kashmir was my pe
rsonal property, my fiefdom.

  And then Mom would remember her Kashmir days again and say, ‘We had a Kashmiri servant. A young man … hardly a man, rather a boy … whenever we went to Kashmir, we would hire his services for about a month. His name was Wazir Ali. Sometimes we would stay in a house boat, sometimes at the Oberoi Hotel. At the Oberoi, we would always stay in its annexe. There was a sprawling lawn right in front with two chinar trees: tall, stout, leafy—and majestic. They had a regal bearing—they always looked like royalty to me. An emperor and an empress, hands across their chests, surveying the waters of the Dal Lake, lording over it, and we mere mortals would be allowed only the view of the lawns. They both had pride, I tell you—Emperor Jehangir and Empress Noor Jehan …’ Mom was indeed a poet but limited herself only to diaries. I brought her back to what she had started talking about, ‘You were telling me something about Wazir Ali.’

  ‘Oh yes! Every evening he would take you out for a stroll in your pram. And then one day he did not return. Night fell. It was quite late. We began to worry. And then he went out to look for you.’

  ‘He? Who?’

  ‘Your father. Who else? Mr Arun Banerjee. I kept waiting—restless; worrying myself to death. He returned after what seemed like an age to me. In a taxi—you, your pram, your father and he. I mean not Wazira, but another Kashmiri. I asked your father, “Where’s Wazira?” He looked at me in a hurt sort of way. He dropped you in my arms, threw the pram in the veranda and called for the Kashmiri who had come with him. “Moorti Lal!” he shouted and then took out a fifty-rupee note and handed it to him. That Moorti Lal was an incessant talker and he started off, “Sahib, how could you entrust him with such a little kid? Thank God, he headed straight home, what if he had run away with her somewhere else …?” Your father dismissed him with a wave of his hand and the man quietly walked away.’

  ‘Fifty rupees! Is that all I was worth?’ I butted in, just for kicks.