Charu’s message came by email.
I haven’t yet got rid of my jet-lag. When others are asleep, I’m awake. When they are awake, my eyes feel heavy. Hence this letter, written while the CD plays. The usual song. Tamal’s favourite, in Hindi:
Alone
in this city
a man
seeking a living
night and day
seeking a nest…
You didn’t even turn up at the airport. I waited until the last moment. Every time someone passed by with cropped hair, wearing a kurta, my heart leapt, certain it must be you. Sakina and you must have been together that day.
True, Sakina didn’t say much as they travelled together on the electric train. Dark circles under her eyes. The fan where they stood wasn’t working. Sakina’s face was covered all over with sweat. She could never stand the heat at the best of times. In the swelter of May, she hung on to the chain in the crowded compartment, streaming with sweat. Her neck and shoulders — once burnt by fire, now swollen, twisted, scarred, changed in colour — were wet through. She didn’t even notice when her face was gently blotted with her dupatta. Ten years ago, when she came home from the hospital after the event, she had said, “Look at my neck and shoulders! It’s as if some strange creature is lying upon me. You said, didn’t you, that a snake tumbled about your Sivan’s neck? Now, I too have a snake around mine.”
Exactly six months later she broke down. “They’re here. They’ve come. They are throwing torches dipped in oil into the house,” she began to scream as she ran about. A whole month passed during which she screamed and wailed and shouted. After that, gradually she quietened down. She wrote about that day for the psychiatrist, with complete lucidity.
“It was a Friday. Only Ammi and I were at home. Although it was December, the afternoon felt really warm. We had left the window open, to let in a little breeze. Ammi was asleep. I was reading a book. In the distance, I heard a cry rising to a crescendo. An outbreak of noises, screaming, roaring, clamouring. Suddenly, it had become a great deluge. Before I could get up, rolls of cloth smelling of kerosene thudded into the room. Following them came burning torches. I had a nylon dupatta about my neck. I hastened to throw it away, but it had become stuck. I prised it off and flung it. It fell on Ammi, who was hard of hearing, and still sleeping peacefully. Before she could get away, screaming, two more burning torches were on her. I fell down in a faint. When I became conscious, Ammi was beside me, a blackened corpse.”
Her voice, recorded on a tape, spoke in English without a falter.
Doctor: Sakina, do you harbour any anger in your heart?
Sakina: (Laughs.) Doctor, when I heard the shouts of those crowds, I was reading Sahir Ludhianvi’s poems. The poem that begins, “That dawn will break some day.” The next instant I was burnt by the fire. Until I broke down, I felt no anger. Only despair. Now, I have a feeling I have saved myself from drowning in my grief. Now, yes, there is anger in my heart, Doctor. That is my support. My strength. My anchor. Have you been told to remove the anger from the minds and hearts of those who have been caught in these riots, Doctor? Don’t do it. I’m going to keep this anger knotted up in my dupatta. I’m not going to scatter it away. I shall go about, hereafter, wrapped in it. Listening to it. Learning from it. I need that anger to help make sure it never happens again.
“Sakina, tabiyat theek nahiin hai, kya?…Don’t you feel well? Did you take your blood-pressure tablets?”
“Mm,” she said.
“Charu must have packed up all her luggage.”
“Mm.”
They didn’t say anything more as they got off the train and made their way to Hutatma Chowk where the meeting was to take place. A small pandal had been put up there. There would be songs, speeches, and discussions until late evening.
At five o’clock, Sakina touched her shoulder and said, “I’ll just walk up to Nargis Khala’s house, and come back. We’ll go to the airport together later.”
But she hadn’t come back even after the meeting was over at eight.
Nargis Khala said, when she rang her from a public telephone, “I’ve just heard the news about Sakina.”
“What news?”
“Sakina fell down.”
“What? She isn’t hurt or anything, is she?”
Khala’s voice broke. “She fell from above.”
“From above? Has she broken any…?
Khala wept. “She fell from the seventeenth floor…From the terrace of the building where Iqbal Maamu lives.”
She listened to all the details, and then hurried there…
Sakina’s neck was broken. She had fallen on to the grass lawn. No dreadful sight of splattered blood. Her head hung down like a chicken whose neck had been wrung. Her body waited for the routine post-mortem procedure.
When she touched Sakina’s arm, it felt cold. She stroked Sakina’s neck. Gently she pinched her ear. Kissed her forehead. All the while, tears spurted from her eyes. A pain inside, as if she were being hit by a hammer.
At what moment did you decide to do this, Sakina? When you saw the grass far beneath you, what did you think? What came to your mind? Did you think, wretched girl, that if you fell, the grass would be soft beneath you? Did you place your foot on the hook set into the wall and climb on to the parapet? Did you stand right up there? Did you gaze at the mountainous buildings all around, reaching up to the sky? Did you see the ocean beyond the building, blue and flowing? Did you lift your arms and dive like a swimming champion? Or, did you slip and slide as you fell? Did you scream, kannamma? Did your voice dissolve away in the wind, thangam? At what instant did you die? When you touched the ground? On the way there? Or, had you died already, even when we travelled together this morning?
She continued to stroke Sakina’s head.
What was it that shattered you? What defeated you? What came upon you in that instant’s whirlwind and pushed you over? Was it what happened last month? Charu and you went to Ahmedabad to prepare a report. Charu’s father’s sister has a house there. An aunt who knew you from the moment you became Charu’s friend. The same aunt who always looked forward to the vermicelli payasam you brought her at the time of Id. This time she refused to allow Charu and you inside her house. Her daughter and son-in-law stood at the doorway, blocking your entry. When Charu proclaimed loudly that the upstairs room belonged to her father, she was handed the key and told to use the outside stairs to go up. Charu and you stayed there for three days. There isn’t a soul who has not read the report you two prepared. When Charu, you, and I were together on two different evenings, you spoke about a couple of things that happened.
First. The front door which Charu and you had to pass was sometimes ajar. When you glanced inside, once, the aunt’s three-year-old grandson was playing with dolls. A small sword and shield, a few plastic dolls — these were his favourite toys. He sliced off the doll’s arms and legs with his sword. He struck a blow even in that shiny place where the doll had no organ.
You called him to the door. “Kuber!” He turned round and smiled.
“Should you cut up the doll like that? Isn’t it like a little baby?”
Tiny sword in hand, he came to the door, with shining eyes. “It’s a Muchlim. I’ve killed it,” he said, in his childish language.
“Kuber, Sakina Mausi also is a Muslim.”
Still smiling, he stuck his toy sword into your stomach.
“Jai Cheeram,” he said.
Second. There was a celebration in the temple at the street corner. Singing loudly and shrilly, Charu’s aunt leapt up and down, calling on God’s name. The devotional bhajans came out like hisses. At one stage, she and her bhajan companions whirled round in what appeared to be a frenzied dance, streaming with sweat, their hair loose, while the floor shook beneath their heavy tread.
When her aunt returned home, Charu called down to her, “Bua.” Her aunt turned her gaze towards the upstairs room.
Those were not Bua’s eyes. In the fading twilight, lit by the streetlamp’s yellow light, they glinted like a wolf’s eyes.
Now, Iqbal Maamu laid his hand on her shoulder. “Selvi Beti,” he said, patting her, consoling her.
The whole family came to the airport. Kalavati Mausi’s son sent a car and adriver. You won’t believe it. Tamal’s parents were there. Tamal’s son, Manush, had brought them. Amala, Tamal’s wife, too. She said she could understand at last my relationship with Tamal for twenty-five years. She wished me success in my journey towards further research. Tamal’s father stroked my head and blessed me. He said, “Who knows whether we will still be here if and when you come back; go safely and return safely.” At that moment I wasn’t at the airport. I was on the train to Matunga. In 1993. To us in the women’s compartment, the bomb blast sounded only like Diwali celebrations. That instant when the train stopped and I peeped out with the others is still sharply etched in my mind. It goes on extending, extending, extending in my mind, like batter spreading out and out in a pan. Because of the crowds, I had joined the women, while Tamal stayed in the general compartment.
“There’s been a bomb blast in one of the general compartments.” When I jumped down, went forward a little, and pushed my way through the crowds, Tamal lay on the ground. Both legs reduced to a blood-porridge below the knees. His chest covered in blood.
When I rushed to him, calling out “Tamal,” I realized that for an instant he himself didn’t know what had happened.
“What happened?” he asked. As he was carried into the ambulance, he raised himself a little and looked down towards his legs. He looked at me and folded his hands, as if to say, Save me from this. Next to him was an old Muslim man, covered in wounds. The games of History. Historical games. Nobody was with him. Some good people from the train helped me to take him and Tamal to the hospital. Tamal remained conscious until his name was registered.
“Tamal Mukherji,” he said, without faltering. Fifty years of age, he said. His religion was Humanity, he said. There was no one to introduce the old Muslim gentleman.
The police investigation came from a strange and oblique perspective. “Did these two conspire together to place the bomb, or was it only one of them who did it?”
With the help of many people, I reclaimed Tamal’s body and had it cremated in the crematorium attached to the hospital. Even when it was all over, the Muslim gentleman’s family was wandering about, waiting for his body. His aged wife, who didn’t have the least idea about the severity of the regulations, came to me and began, “Beti, if an accident happens when you are travelling by train, can you claim compensation? I have two daughters. I must get them married. It was to arrange for some money that he set out this morning.” I stood there holding her hand. You will remember. We tried to claim compensation for her. We failed. Then we set up a fund and made a collection for her. All this came to mind, lit up as if by a lightning flash. And once again, as I write this.
Sakina put an end to herself. She was a lawyer. She was not unaware of the procedural confusions following such a death. It was not unknown to her that she should have left a letter. Surely her death could not have been predetermined. It must have been the result of an aberration, a sudden whirlwind attack, a wave of vivid emotion that overcame her. Attempting to lean over just a little, she must have tipped over completely. She suffered from blood pressure. She had received psychiatric treatment in 1992.
After Sakina’s death was recorded in the police files, complete with all these explanations, in a language peculiar to government offices, her body was handed over. And buried.
Sakina had gone to collect a folder which was left in Iqbal Maamu’s flat. That is what she said to him on the telephone. Soon after she arrived, she had a cup of tea, and went to the room where the books were kept.
The file was there, in an almirah. The door on the far side of the room opened on to the terrace. Fifteen minutes later, the caretaker of the building rang the doorbell and kept on ringing until the door was opened.
“A woman has jumped from the terrace of your…”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” said Maamu, “I’m alone in the flat…”
Before he could finish, he remembered Sakina’s presence. He ran to the library. No Sakina. The door to the terrace stood open. The door of the almirah in which the file was kept had been unlocked. The lock and key together had been left on top of the almirah. Far below, Sakina lay, a crooked line. Her black dupatta was caught at the wing-tip of the topiary bird in the garden, and was swinging in the wind.
Running downstairs, laying her in his lap, weeping aloud. The neighbours supporting Maamu…
Again and again Iqbal Maamu described it all. His beloved niece. He had supported her throughout her legal studies. He had accepted all her decisions. He spoke of them repeatedly.
The almirah was still unlocked. He opened it, took out the folder, and gave it to Selvi. The cover bore the name of their organization:-Jagruti. Awareness.
When it was time for me to go in, a silence fell over all of us. Then, the goodbyes. Choking throats. Tears in Ba’s eyes. Bapu wiping his eyes with his handkerchief. As I went in, I saw my own reflection in the glass door. I was weeping. I am weeping, I told myself. I have wept before, many times. In the upper berth of a railway compartment. Waiting for a train late one night at a railway station empty of humanity, looking up at the stars. In a bullock cart, staring at the animal’s tail. In the bathroom of an airport. Sitting in the corner of the upper deck of a bus. Driving at speed down the middle of a road. So many leave-takings. So many farewells. Another goodbye. Another bout of tears. In the glass door, a fifty-year-old woman holding on to her shoulder bag and setting off for further research. Long hair, uncut. Cheeks streaked with tears. I held on to the rubbish bins for support, and let the tears flow.
“Do you need any help?” A woman, a fellow-traveller, had stopped in front of me.
“No, thank you,” I said, and walked on towards the inner door. Even now as I write this, at this instant when everyone is asleep and I’m awake, the tears flow from my eyes. It’s as if a long era of which we were part, as makers of history, has now come to an end.
I can’t understand it. I sometimes wonder if it’s part of the tiredness which comes with the menopause. But I think I have never felt such weariness before. When did the body control us, ever? When did it dominate us? Were we ever afraid of it? We never even thought of old age. How would it occur to us to be concerned about old age with the example of Nargis Khala before of us? She has never stopped working for her organization has she, even though she is eighty-seven years old now, and crippled, besides? Whenever I think of Nargis Khala, I remember the sound of her typewriter — placed on the table by the window, so that she can look out — as she taps out a statement on human rights, or writes a letter to a newspaper about freedom of speech. Last month she told me she was considering buying a computer. I said, “Don’t, Khala. I can relate to you only with this typewriter.” She answered, “Can I keep from changing, just for the sake of your illusions?”
I argued a lot with her that day. I shouted at her. “Just be quiet, Khala. Why did people like you — people who spent the best part of your lives with Gandhi, who fought for Independence — end up later on in ashrams and small towns? Why did you decide not to enter politics? If you had given your country half the devotion you gave to Gandhi, the politics of this country might have taken a different course. Who asked you for your renunciation? In 1942, you marched through all these streets without fear, like the queens of the locality. How often have we been thrilled by the photographs of your processions, you with your banners held high. Don’t provoke me. You, your khaddar, and your spinning-wheels. You have all become mere symbols. Symbols which we hang on walls or wear as fashionable clothes and caps. Useless, marginal symbols. Cowardly symbols. Frivolous symbols. You left us no other political heritage.”
Perhaps, I spoke like that out of the emotional state in which I returned from Ahmedabad. As I spoke, I went up to her wheelchair and shook Khala. Khala didn’t stop me. Then I buried my head in her lap. She laid her hands on my head, like a blessing.
The folder lay on the table. All the other books and papers from the room were in cardboard boxes. The boxes still gaped open. The schoolboy, who lived downstairs, and his two friends had offered to tie them all up. The arrangement was that they would be paid enough so that they could go watch a Hrithik Roshan film.
She asked Nandini that morning, “We have to vacate the room, Nandu. Could you take a day off? I can’t, on my own…”
Nandini answered, “I have a lot of work at the office. Otherwise I would have helped. I have to go to Pune as well, on Saturday, for my work. Won’t it do if you clear it next week?”
“The landlord insists…”
Nandini was embarrassed. She felt sorry she couldn’t help. She knew Charu had gone to the United States, Sakina wasn’t there anymore, Selvi was on her own. Because of this, she answered without annoyance or irritation, without barking at her mother. Otherwise, she certainly would have retorted, “Please, Amma. I work in a private company. This is not a government job from which I can take off as I please. Nor is it a women’s organization where I’m allowed a day’s leave if I have my periods, or my child sneezes, or my husband has a headache, if there is a feast or a fast. If we want equal employment with men, we have to be prepared to work with them on equal terms.”
Sometimes, Selvi wanted to say in return, “It was we who laid the way so that you could find a job suited to your intelligence, earning an equal wage with men. We weeded the thorns from your path, removed the obstacles, made you aware of your rights.” But such discussions had ceased between them, long ago.
Three years ago, Charu, Sakina, and she had finished some work in Dongri and returned home past one o’clock at night. They had all decided to go straight to Selvi’s place, as it would delay them even more if they stopped to eat on the way. They rang the front doorbell until their hands ached, but to no effect. No signs of anyone inside. At last they woke up their neighbours, jumped across from their balcony to Selvi’s, pushed open the door which was just closed, and went in. It was a fifth-floor flat. Quite a circus feat, leaping from one balcony to the next at one o’clock at night. They were desperately hungry. Used plates and empty vessels lay strewn all over the kitchen work-surface. In an instant Charu cleaned the work-top. Sakina began to make the dough for chapatis. Selvi put the potatoes on to boil. When she took out the already boiled dal from the fridge, Charu seasoned it with chopped onions, tomatoes, ginger, garlic, and green chillies. A piping-hot meal of chapatis, dal, and potato-sabzi was ready at two o’clock in the night.
Ramu was alive then. When she asked him angrily, the next morning, why he had not opened the door at night, he snapped back, “If you come home at twelve and one, I can’t be expected to keep awake and open the door.”
“Why, haven’t I opened the door for you when you came back at three after a night out with your friends? Haven’t I fed you?”
“I was tired. I fell asleep. So must you make such a song and a dance about it?”
“We had to jump across the balcony to get in. Sakina suffers from blood pressure. You know that, don’t you?”
Charu and Sakina intervened, preventing the argument from growing worse.
Later, while they were having tea, Nandini turned up and Selvi asked her, “How could you have been so fast asleep? Didn’t you hear us ringing the front doorbell?”
Nandini said, “Amma, I could hear quite clearly the way you were fighting early this morning. That is what is known as oppression. Goon. Go and write another book.” Then, turning to Sakina and Charu, she added in English, “Isn’t that right?” When Selvi explained to her friends what Nandini had said, their faces tightened.
Even though Ramu died in an accident, the relatives spoke as if it was all owing to her lack of care. “A good man. Half the time he made his own coffee, and drank it all alone…And for all that, it was his own choice to marry her…”
Yes. That happened twenty-five years ago. It still remained their complaint.
Nandini too had said, “You should have looked after Appa better, Amma. You were always running off to some procession protesting against dowry or rape or whatever. People who think like that should never get married.”
At that time she had not had the strength to explain to her daughter that in their youth Ramu and she had belonged to the same group of friends, and that he had married her precisely because he admired her activism.
The landlord came and looked in.
“Udya kali karnarna nakki?…You’ll definitely vacate the room tomorrow, won’t you?”
It was an old-fashioned tiled house. As you climbed up the wooden stairs, there was a small room to the right. Their office for the past twenty years.
“Yes,” she assured him, and turned away. The sharks of the building trade had their eyes on this house. It was in an area that had become popular among actors and the newly rich. The landlord had been muttering for the past two years about so many women coming here. When Muslim women came, he said, the house stank. As if the winds emanating from him were perfumed! Perhaps our own farts smell sweet to us. He said they stank because they ate beef. Having endured the many odours he expelled, lifting his thigh and contorting his body, they had no wish to explain to him about Vedic times.
He was concerned that they might ask for some compensation because they had rented the room for so many years. Sakina had said that before they looked for another place, they should really hold out for the money.
When she took up the folder — the folder with a purple cover — and placed it on her lap, it was as if Sakina was beside her. Snake-neck woman. She who knotted up her anger in her dupatta.
You were angry when I began to apply for research grants. You shouted at me. You charged me with being a coward. You said I was running away to hide. I accept all your accusations. But my dear friend, I am also the woman who saw her lover’s legs reduced to a mess of blood. I didn’t give way then. I didn’t run away. I stood. I opposed. I fought. These past ten years, I gave all my breath and being to the work of Jagruti. I immersed myself in music. How many Kabir dohas I sang, in how many places! Do you remember the devotional song, “Aaj sajan mohé,” which begins,
Embrace me today, my love,
let this life reach fruition.
Heart’s pain,
body’s fire,
let all be cool…
Rising higher and higher, the song would go
Quench my thirst, Giridhara,
enchanter of my heart
I thirst from the very depths of my being,
I have thirsted for many generations.
When I sang the words “I thirst — I have thirsted,” repeating them over and over again, didn’t all three of us — you, me, Sakina — weep?
It wasn’t just a thirst for human love. It was that unquenched thirst within us. We are people who continue to wander about with that thirst. Even now, when I say “from the very depth of my being,” an ache like a cold wind enters my whole self. You must believe this. If I decided, in spite of that, that I had to come away, should you not understand that I had a strong enough reason?
Selvi, Kumudben Bua is not just my aunt. She became a widow at an early age, and came to live at our house with her young son. She gave me her unflinching support in all my decisions. She accepted Tamal. Just because Tamal loved fish, she allowed it to be cooked in her house. She called our house-dog “Arjun Beta” without any hesitation, and fed it the offering from her daily puja. After Arjun died, she gave the offering every day to a street dog, in Arjun’s name. She was never held back by the requirements of ritual. She never allowed anyone to be held back in that way. It was she who taught me about humanity.
The first shock came when she refused to allow me inside the house in Ahmedabad. The look she gave Sakina was the second blow. The third whiplash was the change in her eyes that evening. There was a further blow which felt as if it ripped my flesh away. I never told you both this. Bua used to go out with other women from time to time. Always, when she returned, there would be a kind of energy in the way she walked. Once, on her return, I came face to face with her. She lifted her hand to stop me from touching her. Selvi, the stench of kerosene came from her hand. My whole body began to shudder. We left that very day.
I didn’t say anything to anyone. That evening, when I was at home, Bapu said at the dining table, “The Muslims have learnt a good lesson.” Ba added, “Let them all go to Pakistan.” These people are all of my blood. The food stuck in my throat. How did this lake of poison come about? How could I have been so blind? Why did we never see the growth of this horror which was capable of dividing parents and daughter, brother and sister; which could come between all relationships?
Several little incidents appeared in a new light, suddenly. No one asking after Sakina for many days. Ba’s simple puja of lighting her lamp becoming more and more complex over the last two years. A sticker on Bapu’s car mirror, saying, “Say with pride, I am a Hindu.” My sticker on top of that one, “Say with pride, we are human beings.” Ba’s comment when I bought a green sari, “Why did you go for this Muslim-green?” No longer buying bread from Mohammed Kaka’s shop as we have done for years. Various conversations in relatives’ houses. Small incidents, whose violence was striking, when added together. Each and every one had been a drop of poison. It felt as if the kerosene I smelt on Kumudben Bua’s hand had pervaded our house.
A fear that this storm of madness might never cease, caught in my mind like a hook. It’s a good thing Tamal died. He could never have borne this.
There’s a little story in a Paulo Coelho novel. In a distant land there lived a wizard. He poured a drug that induced madness into the town well. The people drank it and began to go about as they pleased, in a totally crazy manner. When the king tried to bring about laws to control them, they told him to leave the throne. So the king decided to abdicate. The queen, though, counselled otherwise. “Oh, king, don’t give up your throne. Come, let us also drink from the same well.” And as soon as they drank, they became like everyone else. The problem was over. I was afraid there was no well left that the wizard had not touched, Selvi. It was then that I decided to leave the country. I did not have the strength to live with this day after day. Today, I write this to you alone. It will take me days to write to Sakina.
In the folder, there were notes for the Jagruti newsletters, descriptions of some of their events, details of women who had come to them for legal advice, summaries of discussions, details of arguments. Records that Sakina had collected and kept with care.
There was even a note on the occasion, in 1980, when they had cut their hair. She wrote, “On the dais, there was a debate going on about physical beauty. A professor-poet began by saying that the beauty of an Indian woman is signalled by long hair, big breasts, tiny waist, and sword-like eyes, and went on to sing a purana to long hair. Selvi and I exchanged glances. Since Nandu was born, Selvi scarcely has time to comb her hair. As for me, travelling constantly, long hair is a real burden. What’s more, as the professor went on and on, gushing and melting about long hair, the trail of peacock’s feathers, the spread of dark clouds, etc., everyone’s eyes were on us. We went straight off and had our hair cut. We felt light-headed; head-strong no longer!
Selvi remembered it well. Those were times when they faced everything with an energy that said, “You can’t define us. We will break your definitions, your commentaries, your grammars, your rules.” They felt an urgency to defy everything. She and Sakina had gone to a Chinese beauty parlour and had their hair cropped close to their heads. When she went home, Ramu only asked, making no fuss, “Well Selvi, was it a pilgrimage to Palani or to Tirupati?” “Neither; it was to China,” she told him. Lively times, those were.
There was a little notebook containing the songs they sang in the eighties, during their marches:
Don’t surrender,
don’t submit,
don’t drown,
don’t die.
We are the Revolution.
To all injustice we are the reply.
Charu always led the singing. All the rest joined in the chorus.
There was a copy, in the folder, of the sticker printed with the Mandir-Masjid song, which they had pasted on all the railway compartments after the Babri Masjid was demolished.
Temples, mosques, and gurudwaras
they divided from each other.
They divided the land,
they divided the sea.
Don’t divide human beings
Don’t divide human beings.
Charu had written a note on the occasion when Sakina was to give a speech at a meeting in a women’s college near Churchgate during the Shah Bano case. The question of maintenance was being re-examined.
“They had announced that the meeting would be at six in the evening. When Sakina and I went there, there were many burka-clad women outside the college, carrying placards which said things like, “Shariat alone protects women,” and “We will only listen to Shariat.” I looked at Sakina. “There are two sides to everything, aren’t there?” she remarked. There was a huge crowd in the hall. Sakina’s lawyer friend, Shahid, sat down beside me. When Sakina began to speak, the burka-clad women rose up in a wave. They moved in on Sakina, shouting, “You are not a true Muslim. You don’t know the Koran. You don’t say your prayers. You are an enemy of Muslim women.” When they insisted again and again, “Tell us, are you a Muslim or not?” Sakina became distressed, unable to move any further back. Her voice broke as she said, “I really am a Muslim. I have read the Koran. I know my prayers. Let me speak…” Shahid tried to restrain the man next to him who was jumping up and down, and said, “Why don’t we listen to her at least?” The man yelled back, “Shut up, you are not a Muslim.” Shahid replied, “I am, actually.” The crowds became uncontrollable, and the police arrived.
“Shahid and I brought Sakina away through the back door. She was shattered. “This is going to be a huge battle, Charu,” she said. “It begins with someone else giving me an identity.”
Like a sequel to this, there was an incident in the house of Charu’s relatives two years later. Selvi remembered it as soon as she read Charu’s report.
The discussion had begun in an apparently lighthearted manner. “Every Muslim has four wives.” Charu and she had interrupted to say that it wasn’t true, and that in any case, many Hindus they knew had more than one wife. At this, Charu’s uncle’s son remarked, “Of course, Charu, you have to say that. It concerns you, after all. You are Tamal’s rakhel, his mistress, aren’t you?”
“Very well, let me be a rakhel, Sudhir. But how many wives did your grandfather have? And do you know the story of your great-grandfather? He scattered his seed all over Gujarat very generously. Watch out, there are several of his great-grandsons walking all over Gujarat, with the same features as you.”
“All that is irrelevant. Selvi, have you read Tulsiramayan?”
“Why would I read Tulsiramayan? I’ve read Kambaramayanam, certainly. As Tamil Literature.”
“Isn’t Sri Ram your god, then?
“Life is my god.”
“If I ask you whether you are a Hindu, can you answer Yes or No?”
“I can only say I was born into a Hindu family.”
“Yes or No? Tell me that.”
“Yes. No.”
They didn’t hit out. They didn’t kick. But that was all. They roared. They thundered. They ridiculed. They spoke with contempt. When she refused to eat, they said, “Che, this is only a friendly discussion.”
The interview with Nargis Khala was on green paper. An interview which all three of them had held with her. She had talked of her days during the Independence struggle, and had ended by saying, “You might ask me what I achieved in my life. I’ll tell you a story in reply to that. A Zen master went away to live in a cave in a remote mountain. On his return, the king summoned him to the court and asked him to give an account of the wisdom he had attained. The master was silent for a while, and then he took out the reed flute that was tucked in at his waist, and played a cadence on it, very softly and sweetly; then walked away. Some things can’t be said. They can’t be wrapped up in words. If you ask me about my achievements, I will touch you with these hands. Hoping that through my fingers, the warmth of my experience will reach you. I will touch your heads with my hands. What else can I do? What do I know except that?”
How often had Nargis Khala touched her? Stroked her cheek? When Sakina and Charu returned from Ahmedabad and poured out their distress, she put her arms around both, embracing them. At that moment she looked like Jatayu.
“Broad views about life have shrunk into religions, and we have been turned into their symbols. They regard us as empty symbols. Symbols of a religion, a nation. We mustn’t be trapped by that. In this war, let that be the ground of your contest. A ground that cannot be reduced to definition and detail.”
“But what are our weapons, Khala? What, if anything, can be our weapons?”
“Only this,” she said, laying the palms of her hands, wrinkled like withered leaves, against their cheeks. She smiled.
“Aunty, may we come in?” The two young boys were strikingly tall. A girl of the same age was with them. All three worked fast. When they stopped for a rest, halfway through, they danced to “Bole chudian” and “Shava shava.” Then they returned to their work. All for the sake of Hrithik Roshan.
One of the boys said, “Our Baba told us Amir Khan is Muslim. We mustn’t go to Amir Khan films. And we mustn’t drink Coca-Cola.”
“Really? Hrithik Roshan’s wife is Muslim. Amir Khan’s wife is Hindu. Don’t drink either Coca-Cola or Pepsi. Your teeth will rot. Tell your Baba.”
“I’ll tell him,” he said, hesitantly. He was afraid the money might not come into his hands.
As soon as they were paid, they fled, shouting, “Thanda matlab Coca-Cola.”
It’s night-time here. I’m sitting in a cyber centre, writing this. I’ll tell you later why I’m here.
First, there is some important news. Sakina is dead. She fell from the terrace of Iqbal Maamu’s seventeenth-storey flat and died. Her neck was broken. How much violence there has been in our lives! Tamal’s death in the bomb blast. Ramu’s death in the car accident. Now, Sakina’s ill-fated death. These are violent times. We cannot redeem our lives until we have passed through them.
Sakina’s death stabs at my heart even now. She was with me that day until early evening. She seemed a little weary. I was distraught because I could not understand why she told me she would go to Nargis Khala’s house, but changed her mind and went to Iqbal Maamu instead. She was my friend from our school days. I agonized over why she committed suicide when there should have been so many more years of friendship ahead of us. I couldn’t accept that it was suicide. Before she went she had said, “Let us go and say goodbye to Charu at the airport.” I thought and thought about what could have happened between five o’clock and the moment of her fall; I retraced her steps again and again. Some things became clear to me.
The night before, she returned from her second visit to Ahmeda-bad. When she telephoned me, her voice didn’t sound right to me. I insisted, “Come round to my flat at once. You don’t sound good at all. I’m sure you haven’t eaten at all properly.” She came. I made her favourite soft rotis, and a potato, and bell-pepper curry. She ate. Later, as we lay down and talked, she told me about an incident that happened the previous evening. It was rather late when she reached the refugee camp. A young Muslim woman was walking in front of her, she said, one child on her hip, and another clutching her hand. She walked along, supporting both children, and managing at the same time to carry a bag in one hand. The tri-colour flag was stuck between her fingers and she was walking along, extending it in front of her. Like a protective shield. As if she were proclaiming, I too am a citizen of this country.
“I wept and wept, Selvi, when I saw this. Why has it become so necessary for just a few of us to have to do this? My Khala was a freedom fighter. My Maamu heads many charitable institutions in this city. My Ammi retired from an administrative post in a school. She died a blackened corpse. My father was a high-ranking official. Here am I, walking about with a snake-neck. That girl might have come from a similar family. Or she might have been one of India’s many, many poor women. I couldn’t bear to see her stumbling along with her children, her bag, and her tri-colour flag.” She wept for a long time. She repeated again and again, overwhelmed by the thought, “The time has come when I have to establish that my Khala was this, my Ammi was that, and so on and on…”
She was devastated by the thought that the actions of her family — performed naturally and as a matter of course — had to be presented now as her credentials. She said, “Selvi, do you remember what Charu used to say? That when certain birds decide to die, they swallow many pebbles; then when they try to fly, they cannot because of the weight inside them. So they crash down and die. My heart feels so heavy — as if I’ve swallowed many stones.”
“You go to sleep now,” I said, patting her. She dropped off like a child. But there was no cheerfulness in her expression the next day. Later, we stood together in the heat in Hutatma Chowk. She was participating in the hunger strike, besides. At first, she really must have set out for Nargis Khala’s flat. Then, remembering we had to vacate the Jagruti office in the next few days, it could have struck her that she might as well collect the folder from Iqbal Maamu’s flat since she was in that part of town. I conjecture all this from Iqbal Maamu’s memory of his conversation with Sakina over tea, that last day.
It seems that while she was waiting for a taxi to take her to Iqbal Maamu’s house, she met Nandini. She asked Nandini where she was off to. Nandini said to her, “Sakina Mausi, I have to tell you something. Keep away from Amma and me for a while. I hold a responsible position. I don’t wish to be caught up in any kind of trouble…” This from the girl whom you and Sakina brought up. When she was a child, she thought of Sakina’s Ammi and Khala as her grandmothers.
Already Sakina was a bird that had swallowed many pebbles. Nandini made her swallow a block of granite. It seemed Sakina just patted her on her back. Soon after she got to Iqbal Maamu’s flat, she went and opened the book-almirah. I went to Maamu’s flat myself, and made myself go through all her actions. The instant she opened the almirah, she would have seen the photograph of Ammi holding Nandini in her arms. Sakina must have been deeply moved. I think she didn’t take her blood-pressure tablets that day. She must have felt dizzy. She must have opened the terrace door, gone outside, and taken a few deep breaths. She might have remembered the topiary bird. She might have held on to the parapet wall, raised herself a little, and peered down. Empty stomach. Seventeenth floor. Suddenly her foot might have slipped. I believe that’s what happened. She fell against the topiary bird, and then crashed to the ground. And that is how our Sakina met her end.
Now, please read the attachment I have sent with this message. Finish the letter later. When the girl who worked in Sakina’s house had her baby, it was the fiftieth anniversary of Independence. Sakina wrote this then. I found it in the folder. I think she must have written it for us, all that while ago.
Attachment: For Roshni, a morning song.
A few weeks ago your mother invited me to your home to give you a name; to whisper it in your ear. In that tiny hut, where there was scarcely enough room to sit down, your mother had hung a cradle which she had bought for a hundred rupees. She had strung flowers around the room. She had bought a new frock for you. A couple of months ago I had seen you in the hospital — within three hours of your birth. You looked like a peeled fruit then! Now your face and your features were bright, radiant. When I whispered in your ear, like a secret, “You are Roshni, you are Light,” you swivelled your eyes round and gazed at me.
Every night, your grandmother, who gave up her share of a small piece of agricultural land and left her village to come and work in the big city and bring up four daughters in this slum colony by the seaside, will sing you to sleep with lullabies. As you grow up she will tell you stories to the sound of the waves until you fall asleep. Stories of kings and queens, stories about the devil, about valorous mothers and noble wives. At dawn, the calling of the azaan from the mosque will wake everyone, summoning them to prayers. I have heard that in the temples too, they sing the tirupalli ezhucchi to wake up the gods. Roshni, this is my azaan for you, my dawn song. To wake you up and keep you awake. This is the song of my generation. The generation that has lived through these past fifty years. A generation that wants to tell many stories, in many voices, in many forms. You will hear many tunes here. And there will be some discordant notes, too. Because it spans many years. It touches many lives. Lives which are similar, and very different. But do listen to it.
During these years, it wasn’t easy to grow up, to live, to make the right choices in life, in education and work. Several of us, even now, keep changing those choices. We had to oppose the mainstream and swim against it, taking care not to be caught in the whirlpools. They told us many stories, too. They told us that for women, marriage was the most important thing in life. But we had also heard of the Sufi saint Rubaiya, and of Meera. We knew about Bhakti. All the same, several among us were atheists, didn’t believe in rituals, didn’t accept that one religion alone was true. Even now, that is so.
From our childhood, the Independence movement and its ideals had merged into our lives. The men and women who had been part of it were our role models. Many of them lived among us. They came and spoke to us in our schools. You could say there wasn’t a home without a picture of Gandhi, smiling. From our schooldays we learnt the song about Gandhi’s life, which began, “Suno, suno ae duniyavalo Bapujiki amar kahaani.” When we were still in school, we saw the film Jagruti in which a teacher takes his pupils all over India and sings to them, “Take this earth, and wear it on your forehead as an auspicious sign. This is the land of our sacrifices.” For our generation it became almost a national song. We were stirred by other Hindi songs, such as the one that went, “We have saved the boat from the storm and brought it safely ashore. Children, safeguard this land.” We wept. There were some among us who had grown up learning the poems of the poet Bharati. Iqbal’s lyric “Sare jehan se accha” rang out in every school. We learnt to sing Tagore’s songs, “Ekla chalo” and “Amar janmabhumi,” making no discrimination against any language. In another picture Kabuliwallah, the hero, from Kabul, sings a song, remembering his country. “My beloved land, I dedicate my heart to you. You are my desire. You are my honour. I greet the winds that come from your direction with a salaam. Your dawns are most beautiful; your evenings most splendidly coloured.” We used to apply these words to our own country, and weep. Of course, there were other labels amongst us — as Marathi, Kannadiga, Tamil, Telugu, Punjabi, Assamese, and so on. But for us who grew up in the years following Independence, the country as a whole was the important thing.
But these were not the only songs we heard. There were other sounds and voices. Proverbs, discussions, the voices of everyday life. Listen to some of them: Rubbish and daughters grow quickly. Women and cows will go where you drag them. Women and earth become fertile with beating. A woman learns by giving birth; a man learns through trade. A daughter is like a basket of snakes on the head. A leaking roof and a nagging wife are best abandoned. A woman’s virtue is like a glass vessel. If a husband batters or the rain lashes, to whom can you complain? You may sit on any ground, you may sleep with any woman.
Sometimes, the older women in our homes, or travellers we met on journeys, sang yet other songs. Work songs, dirges, lullabies. Women spoke of their tribulations in such songs. Such sounds brought us down to earth from the idealistic heights where we were floating. I found some of those songs in books, too. One remains in my memory: it’s a song by a widow who says she might have served society better had she bloomed as a flower on a tree and not been born a woman. The metaphor in the song refuses to leave me.
There was also something called national culture. Motherhood was at its core. A woman like Jija Mata. A woman who suckled her child with the milk of valour. Before our time, women had already left their homes to work for the country. They had accomplished extraordinary things. But we, who came after them, had to safeguard our homes. We were instructed that our duty was to reap the benefits of the previous generation, to listen without opening our mouths, never to raise any questions. Our responsibility was to create a home, set up a good family, learn what was useful to society. The advice to us was clear: Sit still. Otherwise you will rock the boat.
Our bodies grew heavy. We carried a heavy burden of stones that we did not choose to carry. I say all this, Roshni, with the clarity of hindsight. But at that time we were both clear and confused. We were not silent, though. Do you know, there is a Bengali proverb that says, No one can control a woman’s tongue? So we never stopped talking. We spoke up through poems, stories, political essays, music, drama, painting; in many different ways. Many of us aimed for higher education. If you look at many family photograph albums, there will be one photograph of a young woman in a graduation gown, clutching a rolled-up degree in her hand. Wearing an expression of fulfilment. Head held high. A keenness in the eyes. I too have such a photograph. But it was also customary, as soon as this photograph was taken, to remove the graduation gown and take another photo which would be sent to prospective bridegrooms. I told you, didn’t I, there were all kinds of pressures on our lives? It wasn’t easy to deal with them. A woman called Subhadra Khatre has said, “It would be good to deposit one’s femininity in a safe-deposit vault and move around freely in the outside world.” She was an engineer of that time. She writes, “Had I been a typist, I would have picked up a job easily. As an engineer, they looked at me as if I were trying to usurp a man’s place.”
Until the end of the sixties we fought only within our own homes and our narrow surroundings. It was a battle to stop others from directing our lives. In 1961, the law against dowry came into force. We debated it in schools and colleges. There were some women in politics even at that time. But it was in the seventies that a serious networking among women with divergent views began through conferences, workshops, protest marches, and dialogues. We wrote many songs for our movement. We sang them. We raised our voices against price-rise, against dowry, against rape, against domestic violence, against liquor, and against the exploitation of the environment. We worked together and independently. We gained victory. We saw defeat. Sometimes, we were divided as activists and academics. But one thing we understood clearly. Just because we had similar bodies we did not need to have similar thoughts. The political atmosphere made some of us disillusioned with the movement. Some of us opted out. Others became isolated. They retreated into their shell, refusing to communicate. We became aware of one thing. We needed to learn humility. However much we celebrated sisterhood and love, there were still many demons within us such as jealousy, competitiveness, arrogance, insolence, hatred. Some of us emerged with renewed strength. Like so many Sitas who couldn’t be banished to any forest. Like so many Rubaiyas who walked their own path, singing the stories of their own lives.
Roshni, Light, I have strung together for you fifty years of doubts, rebellions, battles, struggles. This is only a song. When I write an epic for you — and I will write it one day — I will speak of all this in detail. But don’t think the song is complete. It is true that communal violence, caste wars, and human degradation have all dispirited us greatly. But our battle continues. We still raise our voices to safeguard rivers, trees, and animals. To safeguard human beings, above all. You will hear in this song, resonances of our joy, despair, disappointments, and exhilaration. Sleep well, Roshni. And when you wake up, let it be to the sound of our song. You and I and many others must complete it. For we believe that a song once begun ought to be completed.
Now read on.
As soon as I realized how Sakina’s death had come about, I left for home. I waited for Nandini. When she returned, the questions I put to her confirmed for me what she said to Sakina that day. At once I telephoned Susie, who manages a working women’s hostel, and booked a guest room there until further notice. I told Nandini to pack whatever clothes she might need into a single case. I told her I would send on the rest of her belongings later. Then I asked her to leave my house. She was shocked. She had assumed it was I who was leaving, and I think she was preparing herself for a histrionic farewell. She became furious. “Don’t I have any rights in my father’s house?” she demanded.
“The house is in my name. Your rights to it will come after me.”
As she was about to leave she said, “Don’t expect me to come to your aid when you fall ill and take to your bed.”
I said, “I know how to live alone. And I know how to die alone. You can go.’ ”
“How can people like you call yourselves mothers?”
“I count myself a real mother. Those others live with the illusion of motherhood,” I said, closing the door.
I sent on all her belongings, including the computer. That’s why I write to you from this place.
I have put all the things from the Jagruti office in the warehouse of a factory belonging to one of Iqbal Maamu’s friends. A go-down without any windows. A go-down which never sees any sunlight. Someone belonging to another generation, perhaps one of the little girls we educated, like Roshni, might one day open the warehouse and let the sunlight stream in. We’ll wait. Until such a time, we’ll take up other kinds of work; little drops falling into the great ocean.
Sing a song for me, during a quiet moment there. “From the very depths of my being, I thirst.” I shall hear those words. I send you, with this, some tears. Take them. Let me know when they reach you. Selvi.
She clicked on “Send,” and as soon as she got the message “Sent,” she disconnected. She rose to her feet, and paid her fee to the manager of the cyber centre. Outside the glass door a fine rain was descending.
“The first rains of June, madam,” said the cyber centre fellow.
“Yes,” she said.
She came outside, lifted up her face to the sky, and received the cool raindrops. In that instant, time stood still.