Patang-Baaz

--

Hai ghaib-e-ghaib jis-ko samajhte hain ham shuhuud

Hain khvaab mein hanoz jo jaage hain khvaab mein

The absent of the absent: what we see is merest seeming

It is the dream into which we awaken from dreaming

- GHALIB

--

I always hang around shops that seldom see any customers; inevitably they close and I have to move on in search of others like them. It’s a habit I picked up as a child perhaps, owing to the amount of time I spent idling on the bench outside Chacha Mian’s shop.

Chacha Mian was a spare old man of indeterminate age - an age at which counting years is like counting stars because everything then must lead to the beginning, be it man or universe. Chacha Mian sold kites, and just didn’t sell them, he made them too. And for as long as anyone could remember he had been in the business of kite making. Though he would surely disapprove of my calling it a business; he was never in it for the money he said and it showed too. At all times of the day in the semi-darkness of his small shop, Chacha Mian could be found sitting cross legged on a chatai, bent over bare kite frames and surrounded with brightly colored sheets of paper and sweet smelling glue. And yes coils, coils and coils of thread snaking all around him, and from him, as if he himself came from them and if one were to start rolling the charkhi, he too would unravel.

The shop itself was bare. At the front was a display case, always draped with a thin film of dust that I used to trace patterns in; mostly drawings of kites engaged in fierce battles, or of kites with long tails and lithe bodies, kites that smiled and those that sneered. And sometimes of only a single kite that soared, wiggling its way up to the sun to disappear behind it. It could only be done in dust. Maybe the case had once seen better days but in those days the sanmica had started to come off at the corners and the half-a-dozen kites that stood pressed against the glass were discolored - their once bright colors bleached by the slanting late afternoon sun a long time ago. I wondered if he had made them intending to put them in the case. Were they still fly worthy having lost their colors? I never asked.

Under the steps of his shop and all through the length of that narrow lane, a gutter flowed, on which he had placed a rickety wooden bench that rocked. I don’t know why the bench was there, perhaps when he had first opened the shop, he had expected hordes of impatient kite flyers outside and had thoughtfully put it there so that they could wait while he rushed about to get their orders ready. But I only think about the bench now. Then, I would just spend hours on it, without thinking, watching him work and rocking the bench forward and back by shifting the weight of my body in a pendulous motion with my legs dangling. But it was not time that I killed there, for then I had no conception of time; not a clue that it could run away and could change unlike everything else in that neighborhood. I didn’t know that they both were entwined, that one carried the other, that nights could be black and stay black forever. How was I to know? For then, the afternoons all seemed languorous and dusk fell in multi-hued sheets. Just like Chacha Mian’s kites.

I have never been a good kite flyer. They say a good patang-baaz must let the dor wrap itself onto his nerves; they must act as an extension of his nerves; that he must feel each movement, and each tug and pull must speak to him; and for that to happen he must be well versed in this tactile language; for it’s nothing less than a conversation with the skies that he holds. But my dors were never long enough, the pulls were too great for me, and my kites though at first would soar defiantly with their chins up but in the end would cut loose all by themselves. Not that I lost them in a pench. It’s just that my dors were never strong enough either. I should have known.

Chacha Mian didn’t sell manja - the dor treated with powdered glass – he disapproved of it. He was old school, if there could be such a thing among kite makers. He also scoffed at kites made of thin plastic sheets that were all the rage those days, imported from China. But I am sure it wasn’t because they lasted longer and their nylon dors were harder to cut. It was just the way he was. A maker of kites.

. . . . . .

And that is all I remember of Chacha Mian and his shop. We soon moved to another town and I never saw him again.

The Day after Zain died [1][2][3]

--
Zain has died. Died yesterday. Under the wheels of a truck. Without warning.

I did not know him. Fareed did. Had taken a class with him last semester. Over a four month long semester.

Last night he came to my room and asked me, if I would accompany him to the *Quran-Khaani.

'But I did not know him,' I protested.

'Please. I can't go alone,' he said.

'But why not the funeral. Why go to the Quraan-Khaani ?'

'The funeral was held this evening. I heard of it only later.' He crumpled down into my chair. He looked really upset. Upset! - over a four month long semester? But I relented and offered him a cigarette.

--

Fareed banged at my door, very early in the morning. I had forgotten all about it; had stayed up with a book long into the night after he had left, and had only just fallen asleep. So it took me a while to carefully step over the snakes I had been dreaming of, and open the door. I always dream of snakes in the morning. They are mostly benign at first, do not hiss, do not threaten; perhaps it would have been easier if they did, then I would know and the fear would be gone. But instead, they slither out from their corners, smiling; and in front of me, making sure that I was watching, proceed to swallow their tails, very slowly. Their bodies double up, puff out, and turn into tightening nooses. But, inspite of all their glistening sliminess, in the end, they choke on their own bodies and thrash about with exploding eyes. Hundreds of them; still smiling. I cannot imagine a more ghastly image. A greater horror. And yet, all is well when I wake up.

'We are late. Get dressed. Hurry Up!' Fareed, turned out in a starched white kurta-payjaama, pushed past me into the room as soon as I had unbolted the door. Still drowsy from the little sleep I'd had, but grateful to him for having cut short my daily penance, I collapsed into my chair and lit a cigarette. Fareed paced the room, measuring it in four short steps. Four steps and turn. Four steps, turn. He looked impatient and was making sure that I saw it. 'Come On!', he finally implored.

I got up, the cigarette clenched between my lips, the smoke smarting my eyes, and picked the towel flung across the back of the chair. I gathered my toothbrush, the tube of paste, and the soap, and headed towards the bathroom. 'Don't forget to perform the *wuzu.' Fareed called out to me over the closing door.

When I returned, he was trying hard to bury himself in a magazine but his impatience still showed in the tick of his spasmodic feet. I dug into the pile of clothes in my cupboard and pulled out a clean pair of jeans from the bottom. The kurta I had slept in had to do, for I had no other. As I began to change, Fareed looked at me disapprovingly from under the magazine. 'Don't you even have a clean set of white kurta-payjama ?' he said.

'No. This is all I have. You want me to come or not.' He was beginning to annoy me. I noisily stepped into the jeans; and he didn't say anything but went back to his magazine.

A few minutes later, we set out from the hostel for Zain's house on a rickshaw. But not really his house anymore. For Zain had died.

--

We arrived at the house. It was an old University quarter with peeling plaster and a front lawn, much like any other. Zain’s father was a professor at the University, Fareed had told me. My uncle was too, so I knew what these houses looked like, inside-out. We got down at the gate and Fareed proceeded to haggle with the rickshaw-wallah. It's an old habit of his, that I stubbornly refuse to be a part of. Outside, on the road, a lot of scooters were parked – old Bajaj Chetaks and a few Vespas; and against the boundary wall lay propped a number of bicycles in anonymous black. It was a quiet grey morning, respectful of the dead.

Over the gate and across the unraked lawn, I could see the verandah of the house, where plastic wire-mesh chairs had been laid out; hired from a tent-house - the monograms on their backs proclaimed. On them, men in white kurta-payjamas sat in silence, heads bent over cups of tea that they held in their hands and sipped noisily from; all except one, a much older man with a shock of white hair, who stared into his – as if it were the tea he was mourning.

Fareed, finally settled with the rickshaw-wallah and we went in through the gate. As we approached the verandah, the men all looked up from their cups. Not sure who was a relative and who a visiting mourner, Fareed and I, raised our palms half way to our heads in a quiet Salaam. They all nodded. The older man smiled at us with his eyes and being equally laconic, with a sweep of his arm, motioned us to enter the door to the house.

There were two doors right next to each other that opened onto the verandah; each littered with a pile of footwear in an incomprehensible pattern. Shoes, slippers, sandals; in black, brown and beige; of men, women and children, they were all there. Some of the more colorful ladies’ sandals had perhaps unknowingly crossed over to the men’s pile, but we could still make out the door we were supposed to enter. That much was clear. The women would mourn separately, in another part of the house.

Fareed, with exaggerated politeness, pushed at the door and we stepped in.

--

The Angel had said read; and so it had begun.
--

It was a deep murmur that wafted over us as we entered; composed of many voices that meshed into each other; and that rose and fell, fettered to the rhythmic pattern of the Quranic verses - their meanings, in fight for ascendancy, or so it seemed. But to me, they meant nothing. It was just a murmur without a pause; a continuous wave of never ending uvular sounds that sounded like a long drawn out agonized cry.

The room was bare, all the furniture had been removed and instead a thick carpet laid out; covered with white sheets. All along the walls of the room, men sat cross-legged - their backs leaning against the wall – and recited verses from the Quraan. Across from us, at the far end, sat a group of young boys in a row; perhaps the *hafiz in training from the local madarsa; for they seemed to read without looking into their books and all rocked together in some secret agreement.

In the centre of the room, on the carpet, lay the stack of chapters of the Quraan – slim hard bound volumes with their numbers marked on the covers. Both Fareed and I, picked one each and sat down. I had found myself a place in the corner, incense burning to my left and a man reciting in silence to my right.

I too began to read. And the snakes came back.

--

Ammi believes in djinns. When I was a child, she used to tell me stories about them. The good djinns in her stories always happened to be in human form; the evil ones were just smoke, but they could mutate into monstrous apparitions. But then, Ammi believes in everything; even in me and the things I tell her. That’s the problem with mothers: they never really grow up.

--

The smoke from the burning incense beside me rose languorously into the air, shapeless yet meaningful. I read in silence, mouthing the words in my head. The Alif stood alone; the Laam coiled into Meem in a knot; and the Hamza burrowed out and spread its hood in the most unlikely places. The alphabets all seemed to lazily loop into each other, forming words; the words in turn nudged and obliterated the empty spaces between them; and this cursive dance became the sentence. There was a strange beauty in this, and it scared me.

Or perhaps it was just the sweet intoxicating smell of burning incense. But I could not read; the words had come alive, they seemed to mock me. Alif, Laam, Meem – they were in knots and so was I. Perhaps it was an admonishment that they meant. I wasn’t sure.

The collective drone of the recitation had built up. I looked around: the young boys, the old men, they all seemed possessed. Their bodies had swayed gently at first, back and forth, and sideways, but then they began to rock faster; tuned into the building crescendo. The man next to me began to sob; his body shaking in deep uncontrollable gasps – like a house that suddenly caves in; thick drops of tears streamed down his face and dropped into the open book, forever marking its pages. They all mourned. For Zain had died.

I too felt something - something deep inside me giving in. I looked at Fareed, his head lowered into the book, he too rocked softly. I hated him at that moment – for bringing me here. And I hated myself – for coming.