An Ordinary Life Read online

  * * *

  While I was in what we called college, I began to like this Jat girl named Sushma who was a year senior to me. She was strong and fair, like a typical Jatni. With one thwack, she could send anyone sprawling on the ground. My buddy Mohsin, who was studying with me, was also crazy about her. But unlike me, Mohsin was very handsome and quite tall with a wonderful physique. Whatever he wore, he carried it with panache and looked amazing. We used to walk together everywhere.

  It was a rather strange love triangle because while both of us were close friends and well aware of our feelings for her, we competed in unison for her attention. We used to wait by her house until she got out, then we would walk past her house together. When the school bell rang declaring it was time to go home, we would follow her home together. She knew we were following her but still she never even cast as much as a glance at us.

  Then randomly, one fine day another common friend of ours called Naresh told me that Sushma used to mock me and sarcastically call me not by my name but as Chooha, meaning Mouse. He said I should give up.

  It started raining one day and both Mohsin and I knew that she would run to the terrace of her house to salvage the clothes that were out on the clothes line. We kept looking at her through the drizzle, which was thickening by the minute. Suddenly, she turned and looked at us with the slightest smile. I knew she was smiling at Mohsin and not at me. But I hoped that maybe, just maybe, she might also begin liking me someday. Until one day she sent a message clearly asking me not to come at all.

  Mohsin said that he was asking me for a favour because I was his closest friend and because he trusted me the most. He made me swear on our friendship and easily convinced me to write love letters to her on his behalf. He did not have a clear handwriting and was afraid that she might reject him because of it. I was not beautiful but my handwriting certainly was. But he had a hidden agenda that did not dawn on me until much, much later. What if somebody at Sushma’s house discovered the love letters? They could then trace it to the sender through the handwriting and he would be in massive trouble. So, if the letters were found, then Nawaz would get caught and thrashed. I cannot believe it that he had used me this way and the worst part was that I did not realize it.

  Then Sushma graduated and left Budhana. Next, a doppelgänger of the doe-eyed film actress Rani Mukherjee became the object of our combined affection. Her name was Pratibha. This girl too fell for Mohsin. I cannot blame her. He was so good-looking! The love triangle repeated in the same order: Mohsin and Nawaz liked the girl, the girl liked Mohsin, while Nawaz’s love remained unrequited. Luckily this time around, I found this out early on.

  ‘Nawaz, you want to see magic?’ Mohsin said one day.

  ‘Yes, of course!’ I replied.

  ‘Follow me then,’ he said.

  We walked into her mohalla. There was a narrow lane at the end of which was her house, which had a big window. Much to my curiosity, Mohsin was carrying a ruler. Then he tapped the ruler against the big window, thereby producing a sound. Pratibha appeared instantly as if a genie summoned by its master. Yes, it was magic!

  She talked to him and they kissed. My already shrivelled heart shrank even more.

  As with Sushma, I used to write letters to Pratibha for Mohsin. But this was different. You see, it was my fantasy too that I was living. I felt proud because I used to imagine Pratibha and me together. It felt amazing! All the letters were about how wonderful it felt to meet her, how wonderful it felt to hug her, how wonderful it felt to kiss her. When she wrote a reply, Mohsin would make me read it aloud. It was his sly, mean way to show me how cool he was and how many girls he could line up. As for me, I used to respond to her replies with a mixture of what he dictated and what was going on inside me. I’d write to her asking her things like:

  ‘I had worn perfume that day. Could you smell it?’

  ‘How did it feel to embrace me?’

  ‘What colours do you like?’

  When she replied that the eggplant’s colour was her favourite on me (that is, Mohsin), my friend would wear a shirt of that colour. But so would I, still hoping that she might like me too. There we were, two mismatched boys, one milky white, one ebony-skinned, both in bright purple shirts staring at her.

  She had a nickname for me: Kallu, meaning Blackie. She asked Mohsin, ‘Why does this Kallu accompany you everywhere? Is he your friend?’ When he replied in the affirmative stating that I was a very good friend of his, she did not object to my accompanying him. This continued well until the twelfth grade, after which each of us went our separate ways to separate colleges.

  We are still friends today, though these days I am so busy that I am mostly unable to take his calls. It seems like I was a jackass allowing Mohsin all along to use me so selfishly. But I felt privileged having a friend like him, because of his background, especially in Budhana. He had studied at the local Montessori school, which had been my dream. He came from a wealthy, well-educated and cultured family. His uncles were engineers and doctors. I felt proud walking next to him.

  While I went to Haridwar to study science, Mohsin went to Bangalore to study engineering. Unlike me, he had not procured his seat at his institute based on merit but through donation. Whenever we visited our homes in Budhana, everybody used to praise him and he was highly respected for studying engineering. Meanwhile, I was studying at the National School of Drama (NSD) in Delhi. People did not know its value and immediately concluded that I was useless.

  Later, however, Mohsin’s mind dulled. He lost his job and could not find another. So he sold off his share of his family’s property and moved to Muzaffarnagar with his wife and two kids. He is not doing too well economically. Nowadays, he sticks to any builder who finds plots and makes apartments, in the hope of getting some money through these projects.

  8

  Nani ka Ghar

  With today’s roads and private cars, Nani’s house is a short, smooth ride away from Budhana. But back then, my maternal grandmother seemed to live a hundred miles away. To go to her village, we had to take a bus from our village to the next kasba. From there, we would hop on to a tonga to Nani ka Ghar. The galloping of the horses had a wonderful, soothing percussion-like rhythm to it, like a slightly louder version of a clock’s constant tick-tock. It took well over half a day to reach Bilojpura, on the outskirts of which was her house. From there, we would board another tonga to Tatteri, then get off that one and board yet another tonga to her house. So we would leave slightly before or around the crack of dawn, often at around five in the morning depending on the season, and reach her place by three or four in the afternoon.

  Nana, my maternal grandfather, was an imam with a classic imam-like beard, which was long, strawy and swayed ever so slightly in the breeze. He always sat on a charpoy outside with a paandan stuffed with paan and an ugaaldan, a spittoon for the bloody betel juice. Whenever we went, he would greet us with a ‘Salaam wale kum’. And he would pull me towards him, saying, ‘Ab idhar aa.’ (Now you come here.) Then very stealthily, he would dig out a treasure from his secret stash under his pillow and place it on my palm. ‘Don’t tell anybody!’ he would quickly add in a wispy voice balancing the paan in his mouth. ‘Now go!’ I’d look at the chavanni in my hand with the thrill of an athlete who has won a gold medal. Back then, 25 paise brought many possibilities with it, ranging from candy to crackers. As I cantered away with this token of his love, I knew that I was his favourite grandchild and he loved me the most. He might give money to other children, but at the most it would be 5 paise, and that too, only if he had to. But I always got the most money.

  Nani’s three sons lived in her house. In other words, I had three mamas. My khalas, aunts, of which there were half a dozen, came in various sizes. The entire village knew of this house because Nana was an imam. Every time we went to weddings or anywhere else, passers-by who were complete strangers to me, would ask, ‘Are you Mehrun’s?’ When I nodded, they would also nod, satisfied with this validation of themselves
by themselves.

  ‘All right, all right. Good, good,’ they’d say, putting all kinds of presents in my hands as tokens of their affection.

  ‘Here, take this milk.’ And I’d be handed a heavy steel canister with over two litres of fresh buffalo milk in it. Sometimes it would be fruits. Ammi had taught me not to accept anything but they would force me sentimentally until I surrendered. I’d hand these gifts over to Nani in fear, apologizing profusely and defending myself that I had refused multiple times but they wouldn’t budge.

  While Ammi might have been furious, Nani would break into a big smile and say, ‘So what? Achcha hi hai na, kyon?’ (It’s good only, right?) I was thoroughly confused. I did not understand then that being the imam at the local mosque, they were used to being showered with tokens of affection pretty much every day.

  Moreover, somewhere between 150 and 250 children studied in the madrasa under Nana’s tutelage. So appreciation came both in kind and words from their parents. For a while I too studied in a madrasa, which is why I am fluent in Arabic.

  One of my mamus, the middle one whom I called Takki Mamu, was an incredibly interesting man and an avid movie buff. I was about ten years old when I began accompanying him to the cinema. Those days, walking many kilometres was no big deal—it was a common thing. We used to easily walk seven–eight kilometres to a neighbouring village, which was big enough to almost be a town and merit its own cinema ghar. And we used to cross another village on the way to it.

  Once, while on this way, Takki Mamu had to take a leak. While most men often urinate standing up, men with a strongly Islamic upbringing do the job while sitting or squatting. If one is in such a place, like Takki Mamu was at the time, and there happens to be no water to clean up, then you put a dollop of mud to clean it. It was like insurance to guarantee that not even a drop falls on the pyjama, which is often pristine white—this way, neither the garment gets dirty on a literal level or polluted on a religious or spiritual level. Takki Mamu was rather religious. But even then, I was not. He had just finished reading namaz before going for the film. Out of izzat (respect) for him, a grown-up, I turned my face and pretended that I was looking elsewhere while he was peeing.

  When he was done, we continued walking. More than four kilometres later, lights began to faintly appear on the horizon and consequently, our heartbeats quickened. Almost instinctively, Takki Mamu excitedly looked for his money safely hidden in his undergarment, as was common in those times to protect against pickpockets. It was not there. He could not believe it. Where could it have disappeared? And how? He checked again and found nothing. In panic, he dropped his pyjama altogether to take the best look possible at the inner folds and pockets. That’s when it struck him that he had probably left it behind while he was urinating and cleaning up!

  Without uttering a word and with what seemed like telepathic coordination, we immediately turned around and began to run back. We ran all the kilometres we had just covered. Luckily it was worth it because we found the money and pocketed it instantly. Then, without pausing for even a minute, we turned around again and ran back the same route.

  Really, part of the charm of Nani ka Ghar was Takki Mamu. He was my favourite maternal uncle; I would always get to watch a film when he was around.

  9

  The Chemist Incident

  Like a river swollen in the rain, life too is swollen with epiphanies, indeed, it is bursting with them. And there are a few of those that stay with you forever, like shadows, like the air in your lungs. One of these in particular makes you who you are, fuels you, propels you, while you are living out your part and you have no idea that it is doing so. Hindi cinema has often used this as an archetype: watch a classic Amitabh Bachchan movie and you’ll know what I mean. Cinema derives from life and life derives from cinema. Only that in life what often happens is that years pass before you can rest in the luxury of retrospect, and that’s when it hits you like sunlight swimming through to the surface of the sky on a crisp dawn. I call this chapter of my life quite simply: The Chemist Incident.

  I was twelve. The school was closed for summer holidays. By now, you must be quite familiar with my parents who abhorred any form of awaragardi (hooliganism). They thought of some sort of a summer internship for me, except that they were not aware of the fancy term. They just wanted me to do something worthwhile with my free time, something that would help me learn some skill. I had this cousin, my tau’s son Firoz, who at the age of forty, was immensely older than me. Bhai Firoz, as I called him, was a chemist and had humbly named his shop after himself—Firoz Medical Store. Ammi asked me to go sit at the store and that he would help me with maths. I would also assist him as an apprentice of sorts. Like, if a customer came, I’d neatly pull out from the shelves whatever tablets were asked for and give them to him.

  I was slow, very slow to understand, to learn. And he was quick, quick to snark. He would give instructions and almost instantly wait for me to make a mistake so that he could pounce on me with his scathing sarcasm and cutting criticism. I never let him down.

  What’s more, often enough, there would be an audience to witness my humiliation. If I was stocking the shelves and a customer asked for something, he would immediately say something to the tune of: ‘Nawaz, do you remember where you kept it? Oh wait, you have no idea. You know nothing. You are a dimwit.’ Or if I was calculating with my fingers the exact change that was due to a customer who was waiting patiently, this cousin, delighted that he had an audience, would quip instantly to him, ‘Look at our chacha’s son. He is going to school but cannot do maths, not even first-standard maths.’

  There would be something of this sort every five minutes. Once, he even accused me falsely of stealing a bottle of Hajmola; he made a hue and cry about it not only to my family, but also to passers-by. Luckily, my family knew I was innocent. But my self-esteem plummeted to depressing depths. I had no reason not to believe whatever he said. Children are like that. They believe easily, and they question out of curiosity and wonder, not out of cynicism. So I did not question him. This sense of worthlessness, of being a good-for-nothing was sheer torture; it was like being in prison.

  And then, during one of those moments when I wanted the ground to open and swallow me up, I had an epiphany. Not just any epiphany, the epiphany that would shape my life. I realized that I might not be good at doing this particular thing, but this was not the only thing in the world. His was not the only voice that mattered. I could always do something else. I remembered many performers who had left such a lasting impression on me. I decided that I too would be somebody, I too would be something, I too would get out of Budhana. And when I became someone, nobody could ever talk like that to me again. Nobody could bully me ever again.

  It was such a simple decision, but it was a life-turning moment. We always have a choice. Always.

  Luckily, the summer vacation ended and with it my torture. The old routine returned and I began walking to school again. Among the things on the route was the very shop I loathed. Firoz now had a new boy, Rashid, to help him, one who was obviously smarter and more adept at the job. He could count instantly like a calculator. He could find things instantly. When Bhai Firoz would see me pass by, he would holler loud and clear, ‘Nawaz, come here. Nawaz, come here. Come have some chai, boy.’ I had no choice but to go to him. Needless to say, the tea he had called me for would never arrive. (But now that I have, he asks me for selfies.)

  Often, there would be a customer who was being attended to. My cousin did not leave a single opportunity to bully me. He would praise the new hire in comparison to the fool that was me. ‘Look, how quickly the new boy can count change and return. Look, how nicely he stocks shelves and knows exactly what is where. Look at his efficiency,’ he would go on. ‘Not like some fools we had in the past. Look and learn. Look and learn.’ Sometimes, he would make it seem to the customer that he was talking about a third person who was absent, but represented all the good-for-nothings of a certain generation. Sometimes, he w
ould directly point at me and narrate to the client, who was delighted with the great service he was getting, how the new boy was so competent and this boy here, meaning me, was a total loser.

  Perhaps it was meanness, his bullying. Perhaps it was the fact that I was at the brink of adolescence, which is a very sensitive and impressionable age to be at. Perhaps it was just fate. But I am grateful for that painful episode, grateful that I was able to alchemize it. That is to say, for the very same reasons that it worked, it very well might not have and consequently my life too could have been completely derailed.

  10

  The Haunting Dream

  I had a strange, recurring dream night after night after night for many years. What was most spooky about it was that each and every time I was stuck at the very same point, like one of those worn-out favourite audio cassettes or records which you know will play and then keep getting irritably stuck at a certain part of the song, every time. In the dream I was a timeless traveller who had journeyed on foot for a long, long time that seemed like forever. I was sweating and I was completely burnt out. So I’d then stop out of exhaustion, always at this one place where I was looking at a giant block of black, rocky mountains in front of me. Beyond them in the horizon lay a serene whiteness, beckoning, but I could not bring myself to take one more step.