I am a bastard, too. I love bastards! I am bastard begot, bastard instructed, bastard in mind, bastard in valour, in everything illegitimate.
—William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida
Why do I pelt stones? This thought had never crossed my mind, I just instinctively knew when I had to don the armour and start the battle … Enough of arguments, after all I am a stone pelter I cannot win an argument with you, for you are learned men.
… and what else can I do to express my resistance against oppression.
—Imran Muhammad Gazi, I Am a Stone Pelter, Greater Kashmir, 13 February 2010
There are no illegitimate children, only illegitimate parents.
—Leon R. Yankwich
The first time Biul became indifferent to his social stigma was when a policeman called him haraamzaada, bastard, and kicked him exactly ten times in the ribs. The policeman repeated the word each time he kicked him. Then Biul was left alone, shivering in the January night on the bare, cold, chipped cement floor of a six-by-six cell in the Batamaloo police station. Flashes of the policeman’s dark hairy groin, clanking of the dangling, glinting steel buckle of his police belt, with a raised steel police logo on it, crossed his mind later. Thrice that night he asked to go to the toilet and was twice refused and forced to hold it in. He was allowed to pee only after it was ascertained that his urine had darkened his pajamas. He was kicked into the dark jail loo, reeking of stale urine. Shivering, his teeth chattered as he let his bladder go.
He piddled endlessly and tried to study the unplastered, windowless toilet that was better than the one he had at his two-room house in suburban Tengpora. He had been booked under the Public Safety Act for being the youngest stone pelter of Batamaloo. The police had recovered a bag full of stones and brick nuggets from his possession. Throwing stones at police was the only vent to his frustration and the only way to give meaning to his life, he thought.
After three days of detention, he was released when Dr. Imtiyaz, the psychiatrist, intervened and brought all sorts of intercessions for his release. Biul was only thirteen then, so Dr. Imtiyaz’s pleading worked.
That was all a year ago. But now, US president Barack Obama was visiting India and stone-pelting in Kashmir would invite his attention. He could just say something about the resolution of the Kashmir issue, something the Indian State didn’t want to hear. And so, the police had begun to throw the leading stone pelters into, what they called, preventive custody. Biul didn’t know much about who Barack Obama was and what his visit meant, but he heard so much about him, saw so much about him on TV ahead of the visit, that, like many, he too began to lionize Obama in his thoughts. The big boys of the neighbourhood discussed Obama nonstop these days. Biul listened to them, rapt.
‘… America matters …’
‘Remember his first speech as the president?’
‘Yes, equality for all races, religions, regions, et cetera et cetera …’
‘He promised to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and Iraq …’
‘… Extend help to solve all political conflicts …’
‘… As far as Kashmir …?’
‘“Will bring freedom and peace,” he vowed …’
‘All farce. He can’t do anything. He will be the same as Bush. All farce …’
But still:
‘He is a black. He understands the pain of being deprived …’
‘… America matters …’
And after Biul heard that many believed Obama was basically a Muslim, his own faith in him increased.
To avoid unnecessary attention, Sakeena, his mother, advised him to stay indoors for some time. He stayed at home all day, praying that the police wouldn’t come to take him. Each knock on the main door set his heart racing.
Sakeena had married off her only daughter, Insha, to a villager who owned considerable land and drove his own rental Sumo. To earn bread, Sakeena had begun to stitch clothes at home and sometimes worked a spinning wheel. Her customers’ frequent visits began to scare Biul. He took each knock for a police raid.
Biul avoided going upstairs to feed his seven white, fan-quilled pigeons. Instead, Sakeena dismantled the roosts, shifted the rectangular coop down to the small lawn and placed it behind the pomegranate bush. This way, the house did not remain so conspicuous in their small neighbourhood.
Biul had spent most of the school year as a truant, bunking classes with his older friends. He would quietly stow the shirt he wore at home into his worn school satchel. Along the way to school, he would furtively replace his sky blue uniform shirt with this one. The days would be spent in the desolate fallows of Batamaloo’s isolated pastures, watching the cows and their heifers grazing. Sometimes he would wander into the wetlands near Gangbugh where the birds landed to peck for floating insects; he even ambled in renounced orchards, neglected places where people hardly knew him. He strolled through empty paddy fields, napped in gloomy, dense poplar grooves and willow forests. Hopping frogs would emerge from the lush green turf, cross his path and then disappear in the vast fields of mustard crops, the leaves studded with beads of iridescent dew.
Around noon the sun would gradually penetrate through the dense trees and shrubbery and rosebushes, winking in the dewed blades of grass. In the hedgerow, running along a stream that quenched the thirst of the paddy flats of Gangbugh, he would break for a minute to watch the Bihari labourers weed or plough the fields, the dew-beaded gossamer threads on the anthills glittering and twinkling like fluorescent diamonds.
He would stop for a while to marvel at all this. Halt abruptly to observe the anthills and their powder-soil raisings. Pluck all the dandelion balls and blow the little feathery parachutes away. He had trained himself to eat the choky rosehips that dangled from high bramble-bush fences.
He cherished his solitary expeditions; they helped him understand himself and his existence in the world a little better. Helped him come to terms with the guilt of his being and make a bit of sense of the absurdity of his loneliness, an absurdity most difficult to express through language.
But when there were only three months to go before the final-term exams at school, he lost his textbooks. He had spent the day as usual, exploring the fields, and later fording a stream. This was where the disaster happened. His satchel slipped and fell into the stream, floated some distance away and then clung to a tough root that leaned over the bank.
He retrieved the bag. He didn’t worry about the soggy books or the smudged blue ink in his sodden notebooks, the wet pages sticking together. He figured he would dry them in the sun and recover some readable text, but he became uneasy about Sakeena’s reaction to the incident. Finding out that he skipped school would upset her greatly. It would be futile to explain why he did it. She had never truly understood the things he went through, being a ‘bastard’—the social ostracization he faced from his classmates and the neighbourhood boys, the extra punishments he endured at school.
Ultimately, Biul decided not to hide the wet satchel from Sakeena and steeled himself for the consequences. When he came clean, a silence fell between them. After a while she surprised him by saying, ‘If you don’t enjoy school you shouldn’t be kept from doing what interests you.’
Biul stared at her, mouth agape. ‘No, I must study,’ he said seriously, making up his mind then and there to slog. Sakeena didn’t say anything because she believed him. Biul fared well in the final exams.
The only person in the neighbourhood who really sympathized with Biul was Mohsin, several years older than him. Mohsin was an apprentice to his maternal uncle, the photographer and owner of Raja Photo Studio in Tengpora. Mohsin had been orphaned at age two. His parents had been swept away by an avalanche in Ramban, the mountainous track on the Srinagar-Jammu highway. They had been on their way to Jammu to consult a neurologist for his father’s consistent migraine.
Mohsin had been brought up by his uncle. He had scarcely gone to school. He wasn’t allowed to leave the studio or talk to the customers or socialize and mingle with the boys of the neighbourhood. He knew all about Biul, his life, and occasionally communicated with him through gestures when his uncle was not around.
Biul had already grown indifferent to the public taunting, to the grunting of the assistant Imam of the local mosque who would always try to keep him from entering the house of God, implying that illegitimate people desecrated mosques. The mosque management committee tried to keep him from touching the Quran, and the big boys overtly nudged him or pinched his thigh during the namaaz.
He had vowed to pay them back in the same coin. If they nudged him he would nudge back, come what may. If they called him haraamuk or zinhuuk, he would tell them about their mothers’ and sisters’ and wives’ and daughters’ illicit affairs and dirty scandals. He would make them wonder if he really were, in fact, the only illegitimate child in the neighbourhood.
One evening, he went straight to Raja Photo Studio, looking for Mohsin. From a distance he saw that the lights in the studio were on and the glass door shut, signalling the presence of Mohsin’s uncle. He stopped, turned and scampered as far as the reed ponds near the Tengpora-Bypass crossing. And one more time, the vivid flashes of the policeman’s dark hairy groin, clanking of the dangling, glinting steel buckle of his police belt, with a raised steel police logo on it, crossed his mind. Biul tried to cry, and each time he did, no tears would come. When he was sure that no one was around, he shouted and screamed at the top of his lungs until he felt a little relieved.
That year there were violent protests across the valley of Kashmir against an incident in Shopian, with protestors accusing the Army and police of abducting, raping and murdering two women who had gone to visit their apple orchard. The news of the incident brought back old memories to Sakeena. Biul had heard all about that terrible night from various people. The news of Shopian made him even more alert to Sakeena’s evident distress. He watched her chew the edge of her dupatta all day.
Amidst public outcry, youths pelted stones at the police and the Army. On the main road and Bypass crossing, masked big boys clashed with the troops dressed in riot-gear. Those who were scared of participating hid behind turnoffs in the streets and watched. Later in the evening, the big boys would call the hiders ‘cowards’ and ‘fence-sitters’. Biul was one among them.
He had more reason to fling stones than anyone else, he knew. He felt like stoning his own slander-infested existence, the forever unknown face of that trooper, whichever of the five men it had been, who had raped his mother. Gradually, he slid into the circle of big boys and the next year, the police cameras caught him in the front ranks of stone pelters at Batamaloo. In his idle wanderings, he had perfected the technique of skipping stones thrice on the surface of a pond before drowning it. Now, in the stone battles with the police and Army, his parabolic hurl landed smack-bang on the target. He became famous in Batamaloo, and was called Shoaib Akhtar after the Pakistani fast-bowler. He earned new respect from the big boys, those who had bullied him earlier.
Before lobbing them, Biul would examine the texture and dimensions of the stones, heft them, consider their edges and roughness. Each time he threw a stone, it felt like he was shedding off a burden. He used the slingshot too. In one pelting spree, he injured three police constables in a row, like a clean-bowled hat-trick. One of his targets was a policewala whose glass shield read Sexy Nazir. Biul made the stone ricochet off a telegraph pole and fly into the policewala’s face from under the glass face-guard of his helmet, breaking his lower jaw. All his companions noticed the art and skill in his performance, and were impressed.
That evening the big boys brought him home on their shoulders. He stood apart, reserved, unsmiling.
Strangely, the only person who did not appreciate Biul’s ventures was Mohsin. This disapproval, in turn, made Biul edgy. He wanted to speak to him, but the constant presence of his uncle didn’t give him any chance. His uncle was already extremely angry at the indefinite shutdowns in Batamaloo, which were affecting his business drastically. Even the routine passport photography had taken a hit, forcing Mohsin’s uncle to sell phone recharges to make ends meet.
Sakeena seemed indifferent to Biul’s new exploits. She did appreciate how society had begun to respect him, taking him into the fold.
One night, the police raided the homes of the known stone pelters. They dragged the big boys out and kicked them all the way to their battered white Rakshak jeeps. Biul was also plucked from his home and caught red-handed with a bagful of stones.
The first thing the police did with Biul and the other captives was lash them naked with the buckle of their leather belts. Then they photographed them and opened files on them. This ‘criminal’ record would stick to Biul for the rest of his life:
Name: Bilal Ahmad (alias Biul alias Shoaib Akhtar)
S/o: Ghulam Mohiuddeen [sic]*
Age: 12
Designation: Student
R/o: Tengpora, Batamaloo, Srinagar.
Crime: Stone pelting. Injured eleven on-duty policemen, three of them seriously (the detainee has been booked under the Jammu & Kashmir Public Safety Act 1978 for disturbing the peace of and waging war against the state).
Location of crime: Tengpora, Batamaloo, Srinagar.
Location of arrest: Tengpora, Batamaloo, Srinagar.
In their seizure memo, the police wrote:
Arms/articles recovered at the time of arrest: A white plastic bag (used for packaging of cement), weighing almost five kgs, carrying sharp-tipped stones and brick nuggets.
Background:
August 1997: Biul is born to Sakeena.
December 2001: Biul moves to Batamaloo from the bank of Zero Bridge, Raj Bagh with his mother and sister.
March 2002: Biul is admitted to the Government High School, Batamaloo.
July 2008: Biul went to school one morning and remained mysteriously absconding and missing for 17 days.
But now, when Biul sat watching the news about Obama on TV, there was a knock on the door. Biul’s heart pounded. They have come to take me, he thought. He stood in a corner of the room and put the TV on mute. When Sakeena went to answer the door, he strained his ears. The voice confirmed that it was the milkman. Biul sighed. Sakeena returned and marked the calendar, indicating that the milk had been delivered for the day. When she disappeared into the kitchen, Biul ran upstairs to the attic to scan the settlement, ensuring that everything seemed normal, that nobody else was coming to get him.
In autumn people loved basking outside their homes, soaking the last bit of sun to the point of boredom. The neighbourhood was a congestion of small, pillbox-like houses—the area divided by crisscrossing narrow dirt roads, the gables covered with corrugated tin, torn translucent polythene sheets or lines running across with clipped clothes drying on them, shutting off the view. The house facades were stuccoed or plastered or unplastered, the small lawns patterned in ways suggesting raw construction planning. The house that Biul and his family occupied was the succour provided by Dr. Imtiyaz after the government had failed to give Sakeena the promised rehabilitation in the Boatmen Colony, Bemina. Sakeena was still pursuing the case with the authorities.
It was a little colder in the attic. A lozenge of sunlight coming in through a hole in the tin roof warmed a spot on the back of Biul’s hand. As he peered over the neighbourhood, he moved his hand and tried to give its other spots the opportunity to receive the warmth of the sun, as if washing his hand under a running tap. Everything, as such, looked normal outside. Ghulam Muhammad Matta, the closest neighbour opposite Biul’s house was roughly five metres away and yet quite close in the field of Biul’s vision. He was as usual scaling the junk in his small compound packed with enormous piles of yellowed and mildewed newspapers and discarded plastic, his half-smoked cigarette tucked into the corner of his pursed lips, the smoke making him narrow his eyes and making him look more serious than he actually was. Past Ghulam Muhammad Matta’s, another neighbour Nasreen was typically hunched over in the small blue window of her kitchen, peeking out at each passerby, spying on the ones she knew. Nobody had ever seen her anywhere else except in the frame of that window. Biul always wondered at this mystery.
Then there was Kousar Aunty, sitting behind her snot-nosed daughter in the gateway of their house, keenly searching through her greasy, dishevelled hair for lice. At the locality’s end, close to the main road, a group of boys was playing carom. Occasionally, they shrieked with laughter, clapping their hands.
When Biul panned back to Ghulam Muhammad Matta, he noticed something more. There, beside Matta, was an open spreadsheet that showed a life-size image of a smiling black man who Biul recognized instantly. It is Obama, he said to himself. He swiftly descended the stairs, skipping alternate steps. In a matter of seconds, he was in Matta’s small lawn, looking fixedly at the paper. It certainly was the president of the USA, the man he had been chasing on TV for the last few days. The superimposed text at the bottom of the image said:
Hon’ble US President Mr. Barack Obama, Welcome to World’s Largest Democracy
Courtesy: Reliance India
‘Can I have it?’ Biul asked, gawking at the picture.
Ghulam Muhammad Matta stared at him in disbelief. It was the first time Biul had come into his lawn and talked to him. He wondered how Biul had come to know about the paper, and why on earth he wanted it. He kept his queries to himself and proffered the spreadsheet. ‘Take it,’ Matta said.
Back in the room, Biul sat cross-legged, staring at the picture. On TV, people with sickles in their hands were climbing coconut trees around the Gandhi Museum in Mumbai, one of the tourist venues Obama was going to visit. The men were going to harvest all the coconuts to prevent any accident. ‘Authorities don’t want to take a chance, since hundreds of people in India are injured or even killed by falling coconuts every year,’ reported BBC.
Once more there was a knock on the door, a light pat, and Biul froze. This time it was Sakeena’s mother. The moment he saw her, his palpitation subsided. Sakeena noticed the newspaper in front of Biul and wanted to ask him about it, but felt awkward to do so in front of her mother.
Biul slipped out of the house, quickly changing into a pair of oversized flip-flops, half stumbling on the narrow cement path that ran around the house towards the backyard with the tin storeroom. He rummaged through barrels full of coal, pushing his hand behind a rusted tin trunk for a large flattened cardboard box. He pulled it out. His thumb scraped against the sharp corner of the trunk, but he ignored it, waiting for the gash to bleed. When it did, he sucked on it and plugged it with his forefinger, the blood sticky at first then quickly drying between his fingers.
He brought the cardboard to the front verandah and laid it flat on the ground. Then he cut the page featuring Obama out of the newspaper and glued it to the cardboard. He let it dry in the sun. Once dried, he found Sakeena’s large scissors under her sewing machine and moved them along the outline of Obama’s figure, cutting off the courtesy text. Here is the one—the most powerful, smiling, first black president of the USA—who will bring a ray of hope to Kashmir, thought Biul.
He swaddled the cut-out in the remaining newspaper and sneaked out of the gate, skittering towards Raja Photo Studio, excited and shivering with paranoia. This was the hour when Mohsin could usually be found alone at the photo studio.
When Biul was just metres away from Raja Photo Studio, he stopped and blinked in surprise. The display showcase seemed entirely changed, filled with photos of different models. The tin board overhead now read ‘Mohsin Photo Studio’.
Mohsin was alone and seemingly free, seated at the large, glass-topped wooden counter where his uncle usually sat. He greeted Biul warmly and pulled a stool up for him.
‘Is your uncle around?’ Biul asked.
‘No, he is no longer here.’
‘Why? What happened?’
‘This shop was actually my mother’s legal share of the property. My uncle had taken it over after her death. Earlier, I was too young to know anything. A few months ago, my grandfather passed away, but not before legally securing the shop in my name. He called my uncle and extracted a written undertaking from him to leave the shop to me. It’s going to be mine from next year, once I am eighteen. My uncle has pulled out in advance.’
‘Good. But where do you live now?
‘I live with one of my aunts.’
‘Could you take a picture of me, please?’ Biul asked.
‘Sure. It’ll be a pleasure to do it for free. What size do you want?’
‘Normal size. But I need to pose with someone.’
They went into the studio. Biul unwrapped Obama. Mohsin was puzzled to see the cut-out.
‘So it’s him! The one everyone these days is talking about! Are you a fan?’ Mohsin asked.
‘A bit,’ Biul said.
‘Well, as you wish. But he won’t appear as clear as you will in the picture.’
Biul dropped his arm over Obama’s shoulder and posed.
‘You both look good together,’ Mohsin commented, holding the camera against his eyeline, adjusting the lens to focus well.
There were several clicks and flashes.
‘Let Obama stay here for a few days, maybe more fans will turn up,’ Mohsin told Biul.
‘Please keep it,’ Biul said.
‘Thank you! I can give you the print of the photo now.’
The printer warmed and coughed up a sheet of glazy paper, issuing a wisp of pungent, powdery steam with identical photographs of Biul posing with Obama.
‘Here you are,’ said Mohsin, tucking the photographs into an envelope. ‘Keep them all or keep the best one, your choice. All are yours.’
Biul strutted home, clasping the envelope. Worried, Sakeena had come out of the house to look for him. She saw him at a distance and her relief quickly changed to anger.
‘What is this?’ she asked, ‘I thought they had come and taken you!’
He didn’t respond, just fell into pace beside her.
She noticed the envelope in his hand but didn’t question him about it, though she sorely wished to.
‘I was just gone for a bit,’ Biul said softly.
‘It has been an hour or more,’ she nagged. ‘Tathi is worried. She has been waiting. I know you don’t care.’
He hung his head in guilt.
In the evening, he showed the photographs to the big boys who huddled in groups in the playground. One of them teased Biul for being ‘hypersensitive about the first black American president’. ‘You are hyper. Don’t worship the man; you never know … Don’t die like this …’ a boy said. The word ‘hyper’ disappointed Biul, but he was steadfast in his faith in Obama.
Days passed and finally Obama arrived in India. Biul clung to the TV, flipping from one channel to another, waiting for the breaking news. He followed each comment, speech, venture and visit of Obama and his wife, the First Lady Michelle, the couple’s dance with a horde of poor schoolchildren in the premises of a rundown school building, waiting for the President to mention Kashmir. He sat up on those nights, gazing into the blue glow of the TV, the volume lowered to an indistinct mumble.
Biul spent some time pampering the glistening green necks of his pigeons in the lawn, stroking their rumps, throwing them into the air, their wings flapping before gaining height. They flew over the neighbourhood and came back, one by one, obeying his call, the coded whistles and calculated clapping. After shutting them in their coop, he made himself some kahwa and took the cup to the TV room.
It was the last day of Obama’s tour in India. All the channels showed him live, making a speech in the Indian parliament. The president of the United States mentioned everything in his brief speech, praising Indian leadership, the country’s economic might, heritage, civilization, the contribution of Zero, Gandhi and hospitality—‘Indians unlocked the intricacies of the human body and the vastness of our universe’. It was all India, India and India. Kashmir wasn’t mentioned at all.
Biul was supremely disappointed. Again, clear flashes of the policeman’s dark hairy groin, clanking of the dangling, glinting steel buckle of his police belt, with a raised steel police logo on it, crossed his mind.
In the afternoon, Biul unplugged the TV and sat down to assist Sakeena in her tailoring, as he sometimes would. He sat calmly beside her, taking up a ladies’ shirt. He stitched hooks onto its neck.
Later in the evening, he set off to Mohsin Photo Studio, his hands inside his pheran, sauntering, tearing the photographs he had taken with the cut-out of Obama into pieces and chucking them into the twilight like confetti. He dashed straight into the shop. Mohsin was busy with some customers at the counter outside, but he cut short his dealings to follow Biul, noting how upset he seemed.
Inside the studio, Biul stared at the cut-out of Obama. Then, deliberately, he slid it off its wooden holder. Mohsin stood in the doorway of the studio, watching him do it.
Biul replaced the cut-out with one of Salman Khan’s that had been lying there for sometime.