No God in Sight Read online

  I strained my eyes. No, it wasn’t. There was no one behind me.

  ‘You’ve grown old, Jeyna-bi, get your eyes checked. I’m telling you, your line is longer,’ the optician’s father gushed as he steered his son in my path. ‘Meet my Tahir. Just look at him and tell me honestly: can you make out he’s divorced?’

  I wiped my tears. My line longer than the stage line? Allah-be-thanked! It may have been Munaf and Sophiya’s wedding but this was turning out to be one of the grandest nights of my life!

  I became overexcited as usual. When I reached the buffet table, I got carried away like always and had two-two three-three helpings of all the dishes on offer.

  Really, at weddings I need someone to accompany me. I need someone to dig their nails into my arm and hiss, Go slow on the free food, understand?

  So I ate and ate and ate, because there was no one to tell me to stop.

  Halfway through dessert, I felt a spicy burp rearing its head. I pushed back my chair. ‘Oohh maa…’ I groaned. I loosened my shalwar. I began contorting my torso—front to back, left to right. Other guests saw me thrashing about and came forward to help. I motioned everybody to step back, give me space, I was only trying to burp! But one idiot woman panicked—she removed her leather chappal and pressed it on my face. She thought I was having a fit!

  That was it.

  ‘Jeyna-bi vomited! Jeyna-bi vomited!’

  ‘Big deal. She always does.’

  Tch, I don’t know how it happened. They had to carry me to the bathroom. The stuff was all over my burkha. Swear-to-Allah, I try my best to control. But every time I just…I go nuts.

  On returning from the bathroom, I pulled my veil down like the shutter of a shop and hid in a corner for the rest of the evening.

  ‘Jeyna-bi?’ a woman tried to raise my veil.

  There was only one woman who would dare to lift Jeyna-bi’s veil. One very obnoxious woman. ‘Go away, Yasmin-bai,’ I said.

  She squatted between my legs and peered up my veil. ‘I heard you vomited? Feeling better now?’

  I shut my veil tight. ‘Go away, I don’t want to talk to anyone.’

  ‘Ya Ali!’ Yasmin-bai said. ‘See no, just like a child!’ She sat down beside me. Then she started her usual nonsense: ‘Seen someone for my Nawaz?’

  Allah! First that optician’s father flattering me with lies, then that puke bath, and now this idiot lady droning in my ear: ‘I beg you, Jeyna-bi, find a girl for my son. Please, Jeyna-bi, I am only asking for a simple girl, not some princess, just someone who knows how to handle money. I will feed her good-good things…’

  ‘SHUT UP!’ I flung back my veil.

  Yasmin-bai clutched her chest.

  ‘Are you retarded?’ I screamed. ‘Where will the couple sleep in your one-room flat? Under the bed?’

  Yasmin-bai looked down like an admonished girl.

  I went for the jugular. ‘Don’t think I don’t know! I keep an eye on everyone. Your Nawaz is a number-one bum. Doesn’t do any work, doesn’t come for any functions. How will he feed his wife? He’ll make his wife work?’

  Yasmin-bai shook her head; she started to say something.

  But I was finished with that stupid wedding, and I was finished with Yasmin-bai.

  ‘Forgive me.’ I stood up. ‘I may be a gluttonous matchmaker, but I don’t deliberately shove girls in the fire! Before opening your mouth so wide you should have at least checked to see if you have the teeth! Khuda-haafiz!’

  Yasmin-bai, Nawaz’s Mother

  But my Nawaz has started working! Instead of taunting me and my big mouth, if that Jeyna-bi had kept hers shut, I would have told her that my son has finally started working! Yes, okay, I know, like all young men even my Nawaz went through a little idle patch.

  But then, last week, he returned home one afternoon and announced, ‘Ammi, I’ve found work.’ (The three sweetest words a son can tell his widowed mother; and also, Ammi, I’m getting married. Soon, soon, I’m sure—as soon as that Jeyna-bi obliges.)

  ‘I’ll need abbu’s sherwanis,’ my son said. ‘We still have them, right? Those two black sherwanis abbu wore?’

  ‘What?’ I screeched. ‘You namakool!’ I seized Nawaz by his collar. ‘Just get out!’ I dragged him to the door. ‘You just get out of this house your abbu bought with honest money! In this respectable Medina, I will not allow you to make even one corrupt aana!’

  ‘Ammi, stop it, leave me! Have you gone mad? I just asked for abbu’s sherwanis!’

  ‘You think I don’t know? Haanh? You think I don’t know who wears sherwanis in this day and age? No, Nawaz…’ I snapped my fingers. ‘Out, just get out! Go be a politician elsewhere!’

  ‘You think I am becoming a politician? Are you mad? Do I look mad to you?’

  ‘You are not becoming a politician?’ I let go of my son’s collar.

  ‘Of course not, ammi!’ Nawaz adjusted his shirt. ‘I am not that depraved!’

  ‘Haash!’ The day suddenly went from morose Moharram to festive Eid. ‘God bless you, beta.’

  I bent under the bed for the trunk; from it, I fished out the bundled remains of my dead husband’s material life and unwrapped the two black coats. Nawaz grabbed one and put it against his body, craning his neck out to see. ‘Damn, too long, looks more like a dress than a sherwani.’

  Pretending like I couldn’t care less, I asked, ‘So what you going to do wearing this fancy dress? What job you got, haanh?’

  ‘You won’t understand,’ Nawaz said. ‘I’m going to try this on.’ He barged off to the balcony. In this one-room-per-flat colony, everybody changes on their balcony. We bare ourselves to the outside world so the ones who matter inside won’t see us exposed.

  When Nawaz returned, I could see the sherwani was loose—too long and roomy. He doesn’t have the appetite or vigor of his father who lived big, spoke loudly, and walked with long strides. As if to compensate for his dead father’s excesses, Nawaz moves around suspiciously, eats like a miser, and speaks in measured tones.

  ‘Don’t alter them, please; this is all I have of your father,’ I begged, when Nawaz said he would put these precious garments under the local tailor’s scissors.

  He looked at me like I was his biggest enemy, ‘You’re right, ammi. I mustn’t alter these sherwanis. I want to look like a joker.’

  I smiled, perplexed by the disgust on my son’s face.

  That was that. From that day on, Nawaz dresses up in his father’s finery every morning: the unaltered sherwani, the bunching pajamas, and a dark-brown embroidered skullcap. Then he gathers a pile of faded books and leaves.

  If only I knew how to read, or if I had a daughter-in-law whom I could conspire with, I would know what my Nawaz was up to.

  Badru, Nawaz’s Paanwallah

  One day I will turn red.

  Not like Bengal.

  Literally!

  One day the red tinge of kattha will spread from my fingernails to my palms, arms, neck, chest, legs, penis, toes. Everything will be a healthy bloody red. Serves me right for selling paan. Such an addictive thing. It is as if the colony’s women specifically give birth to sons so that when they grow up they can hang around my booth all day like weaklings craving daily—sometimes hourly—fixes of my green, aromatic, enfolded bundles of bliss. And I always pack a sucker punch. Whether they like it or not, I finger a solid coating of white lime on the betel leaf to make my customers’ tongues burn and their brains buzz. With a thrill like that for just two bucks, who wouldn’t want more and more every boring day?

  Men form cheap habits so they can be happy quickly, any time, anywhere. Women, they want jewelry and a nice house and expensive visits to their parents’ homes—nothing your local tobacconist can deliver. So women remain sad, and are further angered by the easy happiness their menfolk have perpetual access to.

  But I am not without scruples. If you are a youth from a good family, I will sell you nothing. You can walk a kilometre to some other immoral paanwallah for all I care and
stuff your body with useless flavors. What I sell is injurious to health. I will have no share in destroying someone if he isn’t already flawed. Like that boy from B3-2 building. Nawaz. Seen him growing up, I have. Since last week he has started packing two sweet paans every morning.

  ‘You want to be a politician or something?’ I had asked Nawaz. ‘What’s with the sherwani and skullcap?’ He didn’t answer, just stood quietly waiting for the paans.

  On the first day I refused to sell him any. ‘Son,’ I said to Nawaz, ‘I can do without your business. The people I sell this stuff to deserve it. They are rotten. But not you. Better stay away from all this paan-vaan.’ But Nawaz would have none of it, and threatened to buy the paans elsewhere.

  I may be scrupulous, but I too have to survive, don’t I?

  ‘More kattha, Badru!’ Nawaz said. ‘Lots more kattha. I want my mouth to be red like a pomegranate.’

  I dipped my fingers in the brick-brown mixture and lobbed some more on the betel leaf.

  ‘More kattha, Badru! More kattha!’ Nawaz spurred me.

  ‘You gone bonkers or what?’ I said. ‘More than this and your mouth will dry up forever like a eunuch’s privates. This kattha is potent stuff, you know,’ I counseled like a sage and packed the paans into separate packets.

  Now, every morning, Nawaz pockets the two paans, piles his books on his cycle’s carrier seat, and rides off, looking like the destitute prince of some newly impoverished territory.

  Abhay, Nawaz’s Student

  Ah, there’s Nawaz-saab riding into our lane. On entering our gate, he will slide off his cycle, chain it to a railing in the car park and climb up to our flat. For the two hours Nawaz-saab teaches me Urdu poetry, maroon liquid will repeatedly streak down the sides of his mouth. He will wipe it away with a stained handkerchief and continue to expound.

  Yesterday, Nawaz-saab asked me to memorize this verse:

  Ashkon samad sa kufiya ul aasoon

  Maghreeb naahid-azaan ulfati nastaeen

  Ah, these words, these words! What rhythm! What magnificence! It is a couplet by Faiz. One of his very first verses. Nawaz-saab says, when Faiz first recited these words at a gathering of fellow poets, an eavesdropping businessman swooned at their sheer beauty. Today, Nawaz-saab will reveal the couplet’s meaning.

  ‘You must first get accustomed to the sound, Abhay,’ he says. ‘Urdu poetry is to be secreted like silk. Savor every strand, Abhay, savor every strand.’

  Nawaz-saab is right. When basking in the sun of Urdu poetry, there’s no use hurrying; I must let its beauty and wisdom invade me like a tan.

  I don’t know Urdu. I don’t know Urdu and I will never forgive my parents for it. Will never forgive them for such a dry, artless upbringing, devoid of culture or beauty—no music, no ideas, nothing. Money—that’s the be-all and end-all of the artistry my lineage has ever dabbled in.

  I tried explaining this to Swati. She would have none of it. ‘I’m sorry, Abhay, you’re just too crude! We have tremendous physical chemistry, agreed, but we can’t be in bed all the time. What about the mornings or during meals? What do we talk of then? How many programs you debugged? I want someone immersed in life, someone who can buy me diamonds while fascinating me with his take on Pynchon’s works.’

  I heaved tragically, ‘Okay, Swati, okay. I may not have read Pynchon, but I’ll show you. When I return from India, you’ll see. I’ll be arty, just as you like. Please, will you marry me then?’

  She tightened her grip on my hair. ‘God, Abhay, if you don’t like all this stuff, it’s okay. Maybe I’m just not the one for you.’

  ‘No, Swati, no!’ I looked up from between her thighs. ‘You’re the one for me! Give me two months. When I come back to Boston, I promise I’ll be dripping with the humanities like you won’t believe.’

  Swati yielded, and I flew to India two days later for a vacation with a mission: the artification of Abhay Joshi.

  Mom and dad were confounded by my outbursts. ‘The woman I love won’t marry me because I’m a ruffian! You know how that feels, dad? DD, Hindi films, Hindi songs—that’s all you both ever gave me. I’m going to lose the woman I love because you two couldn’t care about life’s finer things!’

  As I recovered from jet lag, my befuddled begetters frantically arranged to pack in a childhood’s worth of refinement in two months. Dad visited a sitarist in Bhandup to request a crash course in the instrument. ‘How crashed a course did you have in mind?’ the sitarist asked. ‘A month and a half long,’ dad replied. The man doubled over hysterically.

  After spreading the word around, mom remained luckless. She gifted me something by Narayan and took to masterminding daily feasts.

  ‘This place is supposed to be a motherlode of culture!’ I exclaimed one night over dinner. ‘Where’s the goddamn culture? I don’t see any culture. Where’s the culture?’

  Days passed. Narayan became progressively unchallenging, and my chances with Swati lessened by the minute. ‘Maybe some other girl…?’ mom suggested and fled to escape my cold stare.

  Then a call came, in the third week, for dad. It was Firoz-saab, the sitar instructor who had laughed him out. He was sorry, and wanted to help. Dad put his hand over the phone and mimed across the room: Would I be interested in learning Urdu poetry? Ghalib, Faiz, Sheikh?

  Would I ever!

  ‘Expect Nawaz-saab tomorrow morning,’ Firoz-saab said, ‘and please don’t offend him by haggling. For the revelation of a precious and life-altering body of Urdu poetry, three thousand rupees is surely a joke.’

  For a life with Swati, sixty dollars were truly nothing.

  When mom opened the door the next morning at ten, it was as if our epiphanies had come alive. She bowed while moving aside to let Nawaz-saab in.

  ‘Please,’ dad invited him in, ‘come. Have a seat.’

  The sherwani-clad man with fine features and a mouth red with paan looked around with the creative nervousness of an artist. On his way to the sofa, he banged his toes against the leg of a dining chair and nearly tripped over an edge of the carpet. Then he dropped the pile of books he was carrying. Dad helped him gather them. When Nawaz-saab finally managed to sit down, I believe all three of us considered it a personal accomplishment.

  Mr. Joshi,

  Nawaz’s Student’s Father

  He sat across us, staring like a Buddha at the floor near his feet. Nawaz-saab seemed just slightly older than Abhay. Chunky beads of sweat swelled on his forehead and rivulets flowed down his sideburns into his sherwani’s collar. Must not have been earning enough to afford square meals—the poor fellow was practically floating in his clothes!

  So it was all about this. Abhay sneering at our favorite TV shows and groaning at our nightly radio programs. Abhay flinging aside our Reader’s Digests and Chitralekhas. The past three weeks of making Shilpa and me feel like disastrous parents. This scrawny man with a mouthful of paan was to amend Abhay’s dull upbringing by teaching him Urdu poetry.

  Abhay says we are cultureless. That his mother and I never exposed him to the arts; never made provision for the refinement that comes from contact with sublimity. Doesn’t Abhay realize? He is our art. He is my mural, my novella, and the verse I invested my years in. Instead of providing for him, would he rather I had painted and his mother sung?

  Intoxicated by the self-obsessed psychological hyper-awareness his stay in America has triggered, Abhay thinks he can demand answers and justifications from everyone. I suspect he has the courage to do so only with us, his parents. His girlfriend in America has him whirling on the edge of her whimsical fingernail, customizing Abhay as her fancy dictates. It makes Shilpa angry at times. But I say, ‘Let go, let go. In a month Abhay will return to America. Then we can resume our peaceful routine.’

  Children overestimate their importance in their parents’ lives. Toward Abhay I feel a cool detachment. When he told me how much his American employer pays him, I had felt some astonishment that this youngster, whom the world is wanting to own, is a p
roduct of me! But otherwise I feel toward him a neutral objectivity. Abhay must never learn of this, of course. He must believe my enthusiasm during his visits to India.

  When I married, I fell in love with Shilpa. Two years later, I lost my heart to my daughter Avantika. And three years after that, Abhay became my world. Now? No one. I am in love with no one. I have replaced them all with nothingness. A blank mind. Borrowed opinions. Manufactured entertainment. A thriving gift shop for my livelihood and a hard bed as per my tastes. What else is there to life? Music? Painting? Poetry? Bah! Art is for those who are clumsy at real life. Such people squirrel away everything—memories, emotions, and opinions—for later.

  When you love like the ocean and wound like Christ, art and beauty ooze from everything you do.

  Abhay needs to become a parent, I think. And so does Swati, his girlfriend. They need to snap out of the clinical preoccupation with the mind and feel the mess, sweat, dirt, blood, and mucus of real life. The day Abhay hears the first screech of their newborn, I am certain all this regret over an artless upbringing and head-breaking over Urdu poetry will seem a frivolous waste of time. Children are the ultimate grounding for the rootless.

  I just hope Abhay isn’t as unfortunate as me, to fall out of love with his own offspring. Or maybe…

  Maybe when it does happen—when Abhay’s heart doesn’t beat for his child anymore—this Urdu poetry will stave off the nothingness and give Abhay something to look forward to. Maybe this brief contact with art will be all that remains. Could I also find something to look forward to other than the shop, a cricket match, or the next meal? Is there really a way out of this nothingness? What the hell is Abhay going on about?

  Nawaz-‘saab’

  So one day even Mr. Joshi decided to learn Urdu poetry. He said, ‘Nawaz-saab, I want to sample profundity before it is too late. My son says you are an excellent teacher. Let me sit with Abhay, please; you can teach us both.’