An Ordinary Life Read online

  All of my poor friends in Budhana are like this. Ninna has a barber shop. Another has a kebab shop. None of them will accept a paisa from me. On the contrary, they will do favours for me. You cannot find people like them in today’s world, even if you had a magic lamp with a genie.

  * * *

  My father’s brother’s daughters had married and moved to Pakistan. They were now coming to visit us from Lahore. It was the first time that somebody from such a big city was coming to visit us. To us village kids, the thrill of Pakistan was the same that city kids might feel when their cousins visit them from fancy countries like America or England or Australia. This relative who was visiting us was called Mussarrat and her teenage daughter Asma was ravishing. So ravishing that I almost fainted at the sight of her fair looks. Once, it was dusk and I was by the kerosene lamp, moving my face closer and closer to the lamp. She was sitting across me—we were of the same age and were hanging out—and realized what I was doing.

  ‘No matter how close you come to the light, you will always remain black and invisible,’ she quipped mercilessly. ‘Only your teeth will be visible.’

  Her bluntness sliced through me. I was heartbroken. For the first time in my life, I felt a surge of emotions rising in me that I had never known before. Because I had never been insulted before by a girl I had put up on a pedestal and worshipped. On the other hand, there were people like Sukka Pehelwan’s sister whom society looked down upon because she was from a lower caste but who had praised me several times: ‘How beautiful your eyes are, Nawaz!’

  For the first time, I became conscious of my colour. I did not know then that this would happen many times in my life. But I realized that judgements were also balanced with praise. Like my eyes were gorgeous even though my colour was not.

  * * *

  Growing up with animals meant that we cared for them like our own children. They gave me so much love and taught me so much. Few animals can match the loyalty of a buffalo. Either Ammi or I, being the eldest, would bathe the buffaloes, often in the river, sometimes outside our home by the hand pump. That day, Ammi was bathing them, one by one. She was scrubbing one of them, while a few feet away, the remaining Herculean beasts, awaiting their turn, were tied up with ropes which were knotted loosely enough for their comfort and yet tightly enough for a bit of stability to rein them in. You could see how much trust there was between the animals and their keepers. One of them managed to shake its head enough to unleash itself completely and began to walk away, deciding it was time for a stroll. I don’t exactly remember which one of my younger brothers it was—perhaps Faizi, perhaps Almas, maybe Shamas, probably Shamas because he is the youngest; he was crawling rapidly towards the buffalo, like any child would, attracted as he was to the wide-eyed animal. The buffalo itself was speeding towards the spot where she would be tied up later, once Ammi was done bathing all the children. My brother, gurgling with joy, came in her way, right in front of her feet. She braked her hooves and stopped in her tracks instantly, not unlike a racing car coming to a screeching halt in order to avoid running a pedestrian over, and mooed loudly to attract attention. The noise immediately made Ammi turn around and run at the speed of lightning to pick her baby up. Had it not been for the intelligence and the loyal love of the animal, my brother might have been completely crushed to a pulp.

  6

  Schooldays

  On the way to my primary school was a Montessori school, where the children of our village’s well-educated parents went to study. Many of my friends and I dreamt of studying there but we went to the local government school which we simply called sarkari school. We did not have traditional desks and chairs. Instead, there were neat rows of jute bags which were the seats for the students. The bags could conveniently be folded and carried. Only the teacher had a table and a chair, with a blackboard mounted on a wooden easel behind him.

  Then I went to a school which was considered to be of an ‘okay standard’ to study till class eight; it was called Sanatan Dharma School. All education from eighth class onwards was classified as college in Budhana, so I went to the local DAV College. We used to walk leisurely to the institution; it was several kilometres away and took us about an hour to reach.

  Those days, smallpox, which we called chechak ki bimaari, was like the great plague of previous centuries. It used to wipe out entire hamlets. Pamphlets and posters were littered across Budhana: ‘Report Chechak. Get Rs 100.’ Actually, I don’t remember the exact amount but I believe it was Rs 100, which was a big amount those days. It was as if the disease was a wanted criminal with a reward on his head. (Some years later, smallpox was eradicated and consequently banished from this throne of honour, and polio replaced it.)

  There was a girl in the school called Sarwari, who was called Sarvo for short. Yes, the same Sarvo who came to my house to study under Ammi’s tutelage for extra Arabic lessons and who once babysat me. She had strange pockmarks on her face as if she had had the disease a long time ago, but was now cured.

  When the government officials came visiting our school, educating us about the illness, precautions, and, what was of most interest to me, the reward for reporting cases of smallpox, I instantly raised my hand.

  ‘Yes, I know somebody!’

  ‘Okay,’ said one of the officials. ‘Do you know where that person is?’

  ‘Yes, of course! Follow me,’ I said, getting up and leading the way to the girl’s house, which was a short walk away.

  I knocked on the door. Sarwari’s mother opened it just a bit so that she could peek through. Imagine this scene. I was in the front. Behind me were half a dozen adults, the government officials. Behind them was half of the population of our school, all children who had come to watch this critical scene of how I, one of them, would become wealthy any instant now. They were already marvelling at my luck. I was about ten or twelve years old and this amount in their eyes, at that age, was the equivalent of being a millionaire.

  ‘What’s up?’ Sarvo’s mother asked, suspiciously eyeing this strange crowd. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Is Sarvo there?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, she is here. But she is taking a nap.’

  ‘Wake her up. Wake her up, please!’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Sarvo has these marks. Government doctors are here. They have come from far. Show the marks to the doctor. Get her cured.’

  ‘But she recovered a long time ago.’

  ‘How can you be sure? The doctors are here. No harm in showing them,’ I persisted, dreaming of the money.

  The officials took a look and immediately said what a colossal waste of time this was! She did have something ages ago, probably measles or chickenpox, but she was fine now. They turned and left. But the kids did not. They started teasing me immediately with a moniker: ‘Abey, Sau Rupay!’ (Hey, Hundred Rupees!) For a long time they called me that instead of Nawaz: ‘Hey, Hundred Rupees, come here!’ ‘Hey, Hundred Rupees, do this.’

  * * *

  To give you a context, our teachers used to hit us a lot. A lot! They never bothered to give us the reason for the beating. And we did not care. We simply assumed it was one of the laws of the universe; that this was normal, that was how it was and that was what teachers did.

  I was a backbencher. Once, in my classroom, there happened to be some chairs. I stacked them up, one atop the other, finally making a careful tower of five chairs. Then I sat proudly on this DIY throne. All of this was done during those precious few minutes of freedom in between periods when one teacher left and the other was yet to arrive. It was the Sanskrit period and this particular teacher, Balakram Sir, usually came in a little late. He was also very strict. However, that day he decided to come in early. As was the fate of Indian royalty, I was banished from the throne and tortured. In other words, he made me step down and beat me like crazy with this weapon he carried everywhere, an awful cane which had an elastic bend for evoking extra agony. At once, marks formed wherever it fell on my bony body. This teacher was es
pecially sadistic: he used to poke pencils deeply into the various crevices and depressions in the body, like behind the ears or the bone behind the neck. I got beaten up pretty badly on a routine basis until I was in the tenth standard.

  * * *

  Our sarkari school itself was located at a height and it was open on all sides. Due to the elevation, the surrounding houses were located at the same level as well. So we could peek into the windows of the houses. We had this one teacher who was not interested in teaching at all. He was quite weird. He used to take out wads of money, mostly Rs 20 notes bundled up into rolls and fastened with rubber bands, and display them on the teacher’s table. Far away, but within clear visibility, a girl in one of the houses was making uplas out of cow and buffalo dung. Every day she came out at the same time, which was around 10 a.m. We would pretend to be immersed in our textbooks as if they were the most interesting things in the world. But every now and then, we would catch a glimpse of his shady activities. He would flip around the rolls of money showing them off to the girl. It was extremely strange, we thought in our innocence, not understanding the entire story.

  * * *

  My friend was participating in the annual school play. He requested the teacher to take me in it as well. Knowing what a shy boy I was, the teacher was far from keen to cast me. But eventually she did. I was playing a small-time politician. We were enacting a mock Parliament. A topic was chosen and we were to debate for and against it. She gave me only one line. But I rehearsed like crazy for it.

  On the day of the show, I kept talking and talking and talking. Instead of one line, I ended up saying ten lines. As soon as I got off the stage, I realized that I did not remember what I had said and assumed that I had said it all wrong. But after the show, many people in the audience came up to me and congratulated me; however, they also said that they did not understand what I had said. But it felt good, really good. Imagine my surprise! I understood then that this was because I was completely in character and it had nothing to do with the lines.

  7

  Of Love Letters and Kites

  Like most people, I was about fourteen or fifteen years old when I first fell in love. Out of respect for her and her privacy, let’s change her name to, say, Shahana. She was a few years younger than me and belonged to an orthodox Muslim family. They were extremely conservative, so much so that she was not allowed to leave her house too many times and during the rare times when she did, somebody almost always accompanied her; sometimes it would be her younger brother, a toddler, who would be on her hip when she went to buy vegetables from the market. Initially, Shahana used to come outside only in a burqa. Still I stared at her softly, showing that I had eyes for her and her only, to let her know that I was besotted with her. She caught the rather obvious hint. She also figured that this thin lad called Nawaz went to the sarkari school, walking right past her house at a certain time, around 10 a.m. And then he walked back the same path on his way home at around 4 p.m. She used to stand outside her door at these times and we gazed into each other’s eyes without blinking, without saying a word. Whatever you want to call this went on for an entire year.

  An actual meeting was becoming next to impossible. In those days, electricity outages were common and the darkness held great potential for clandestine meetings. But families worried especially about girls in such situations, so that option never worked out for me. Still, I did not give up hope. While flying kites, I used to write a love note and stick it on the back of the kite. Then I would navigate the kite ever so carefully so that it landed on her terrace and I’d wait with bated breath for her to pick up the note. This was rather risky as I had to gauge the wind’s every whim, lest it land on another terrace and create a potential apocalypse for us. Strangely enough, every time I needed the wind to ferry the kite back to my terrace so that I could read her reply, the wind would stubbornly refuse to blow in that direction. Nature was not on our side but our love letters continued.

  ‘I love you a lot!’ I’d write.

  ‘Me too!’ she’d reply.

  ‘Meet me tonight,’ I’d beg.

  ‘My Ammi is home. I can’t come outside,’ she’d say.

  ‘Let’s meet when you come shopping in the evening.’

  ‘Let’s see.’

  Television had just arrived in Budhana. Those were the days of the old, bulky television sets, which sat protected in their royal wooden cases like a precious gem sitting proudly in a jewellery box. They had huge knobs, almost the size of door knobs, and like those had to be turned. Like most of Budhana, Shahana too was smitten with TV. One evening, we finally had a moment together, but she was in a massive rush to reach the village’s community television because it was time for the classic Indian farming show Krishi Darshan to air. ‘Wait!’ I held her hand and begged firmly. ‘Wait with me, Shahana.’ She got very upset and wriggled her wrist away from my grasp and said, ‘But I have to run now to watch TV.’ I was furious and told her, ‘One day I will be on TV. Just you wait and watch.’ I released my grip and let her go. I have no idea from where those words had come.

  Some years later, like all of us kids, Shahana too grew up some more. She was beautiful. She and her three sisters wore that specific type of burqa which covered every centimetre of the body and the face, barring the eyes. Amidst all those countless constraints, I’d look at their eyes and try to guess which one was Shahana’s. Worse, the moments for this guessing game itself were fleeting. During the village mela, when all of them were there, I changed my strategy to a more efficient one: I recognized my beloved instantly, by her feet adorned in simple, golden, strappy sandals.

  A rather filmi incident happened one day. Abbu asked me to go to Muzaffarnagar to get some forms, which, if I remember correctly, were application forms for enrolling in the police or some such government job. We respected our district so much that we rarely referred to it by its name. We simply said, ‘Sheher ja rahe hain.’ (We are going to town.) This was because it was a very big deal to go there, only the very brilliant went there.

  It was peak afternoon and so the streets, true to Budhana’s nature and weather, were practically empty. This was the first time I could talk to Shahana in person. Imagine my excitement! Petrified of being caught, one of us walked on one side of the street, the other on the opposite side. As an extra precaution, she did not exactly match my steps, but walked a few steps behind.

  ‘I am going to town.’

  She remained silent.

  ‘What can I get for you? What would you like?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said softly. ‘Just that you return safe and sound. Come back quickly.’

  It was one of the most beautiful moments of my life. We were so excited, so ecstatic and yet so afraid.

  Life took its course and though our feelings remained, our minimal interaction faded into nothingness.

  Circa 2000, the gods melted a bit and placed a few episodes for a TV serial in my lap for the first time. Immediately, my mind travelled in time, remembering that I had told her, just like that, that I would be on television someday. And twelve years later, I was. The realization sliced through me like a knife. My insides stung with desperation. Oh God! My first love who loved TV more than me, simply must know that I was on TV. I called Budhana immediately and sent messages: ‘Somebody please tell her. Somebody please tell Shahana that Nawaz is now on TV.’

  I discovered from my friend who lived right ahead of Shahana’s house that she had been married off to a typical maulana type of a man who had a typical maulana beard, and was extremely orthodox. He was three times older than her and already had six children of his own from a previous marriage. She had one child of her own. He was so conservative that he did not allow her to watch TV or even listen to the radio. I felt awful. What kind of a man was this! The very next day I called my parents and asked them that no matter what happened, they absolutely must not discontinue the education of my sisters, they must not pressurize them about anything and they must let them be free. Women in
the village, especially, have it tougher and having grown up in the village, we had no exposure either unless we went to the city or saw how different things were. That was the turning point and I became liberal about women’s issues.

  Soon after Shahana, I began to like a distant relative of mine called Farhana. But she liked another guy. The three of us were between the ages of seventeen and nineteen; we loved with a shy, raw tenderness that only teenagers possess. Neither of us expressed our liking but the love triangle was so obvious. Farhana went on to marry some random man and moved to another village called Jhinjhana. The boy she had liked also moved to another village after getting married. I went to Haridwar to study science and eventually from there to Delhi. We forgot about one another completely.

  Twenty-five years later, I saw her again. She had come to our house to visit some relatives, accompanied by her five or six little children. The lines of sorrow on her face and the roughness of her aura gave away that her life had been anything but a bed of roses. Barring the regular mundane greetings that formality required of us (‘How are you?’ ‘What about your better half?’ ‘How about work, children?’ ‘What’s your new place like?’), we did not utter anything to one another. But strong undercurrents of silence ran between us and conveyed our tremendous regret. Hers that she was not with me. Mine that she should not be like this, that she should be happy. While leaving, she simply said how much she and her children loved my work.

  * * *

  Shahana remains my first true love. But I will not deny that there was a haphazard series of crushes before and after her. For instance, I had begun to like a girl in our sarkari school. Apparently, she was what we called shaukeen, as in someone who is very fond of something; in her case, she seemed sensuously fond of music, pretty trinkets, etc., giving the impression of being easy to please and therefore, easy to get. Her name was Panna. So I used to sing to her a popular Hindi film song called ‘Heera ki tamanna hai ki Panna usse mil jaaye’. In the film, the superstar Dev Anand’s character, Heera, serenades the beautiful actress Zeenat Aman’s character called Panna. I’d pretend that I was Heera and she was my Panna, and she would giggle like crazy. To complete the act, I used to dress up in Dev Anand’s fashion staple: baggy pants, those loose pants which were extremely trendy at the time. I was about eight years old. Like most kids I was under his spell. Well until I was fifteen years old, I dressed like him and imitated his gait, the way he talked—as many of his nuances as possible.