The Case of the Elusive Curio

They must have been grey.

I never knew the colour of his eyes, but I had heard the soft cadence of his Urdu a thousand times, and once, only once, caught a glimpse of neat fingertips through the chink in the door.

After Nana died, everything went haywire. So what if the girls were going to England to study. They were expected to respect the zenana there as well. God knows whether they ever wore the burqa in London as they were meant to, but we made it clear to them that if they tried to sow wild oats abroad, we would come to know, and consequences would be dire. They lived in Golders’ Green. What did they think? That Ashraf mian and his brothers would not keep an eye on them?

At home, I was very strict about the zenana. I would hear of no frivolities like these girls like to indulge in – giggling away about which boy said what to whom, how he looked at which sister. I know I was one of them, but I was a good ten years older than Rafiya, the next one after me, and you, Shabnam, jaan, whom I had to bring up like a mother after Ammi went.

I was going to be married to Amjad sahab, he was Ammi’s uncle’s grandson, a very bright spark they said. My age, because he had been in Jeddah for several years, unable to afford a ticket back home for a long while. Of course, by the time we were finally married he was rolling in riches, he had bought a Mercedes and what not.

I was really happy with Amjad; it feels so strange, Shabnam, to say his name, but you insist so! Why you want me to, I just cannot understand! But then if you want to hear the story, what can I do, I’ll try.

He treated me very well, you know, he was one of those “modern” types – the sort that wants his wife to talk openly about her desires; you can understand now, jaan, can’t you? You’re a married woman after all. But he was very particular about maintaining the purdah. I’m glad. I did not wish to wear those dresses and hijabs that seemed to be so popular in Jeddah.

But look, you can’t expect me to talk of him without recollecting every old memory...no, not Amjad, I mean him, the one you are so curious about.

He was just a boy, Shabbo, and I was very mature for my age – Ammi went and I had to be strong. He had just come from London, he had met our sisters there on Id-ul-bakr. It was nothing compared with the daawat at home, of course, but I think it was then that he began to think of our family like his own. No one knew why he divorced himself from his real family later – they were the best of people...they say it was because of some girl, it was inappropriate alliance...no one ever knew exactly, but he was lonely even before, a rift was always there. Strange, he would tell me everything, but never this. It was apparent that he was in love with someone; no one could speak like that otherwise. But you know what was surprising – he spoke like a shaayar but wrote rather badly – he was dabbling in Farsi as well as Sanskrit at the time – some fancy research in England. But he was perhaps destined to study language, not master it.

Even so, I don’t know if this was even correct sentence structure, not knowing Farsi myself, but he had just read that famous inscription at Lal Qila and was deep in thought over it for many days. After which he passed a chit to me, in neat, if slightly immature handwriting,

Jahan-e-ishq zaminast
Salim, aashiq haminast

What he meant, I think, was,

There is a world of love on earth,
Salim, the lover is here.

He brooded over this so much, as if it had some hidden meaning. This meaning became clear later, but then I was too thrilled to see his handwriting, and read his poetry, preserve it, rather than hearing it through the crack in the door.

This door was locked. It had been for over a hundred years. This house, you know, was built in Bahadur Shah Zafar’s time, two families made their home in it, a wall was erected, and a door put in place, in simpler times, if ever a neighbourly service be called upon.

Salim began to talk to me by chance; I had just been married, Amjad had flown off to Jeddah again, it would be a year before he could return – some bureaucratic reasons. I was standing there, by the door, on my side of the wall. Nobody was home. I couldn’t stand the silence; said, to no one, “Aaine se baat karoon kya? Shall I talk to the mirrors? Huge mansion of a house and not a soul here”.

And to my surprise, a voice answered, “You can talk to me. I think we both need a friend”. He said “raazdan”, keeper of secrets, so hard to translate that word...

We poured our souls out; he was right, we both needed a friendly ear. After that we began meeting at night, when everyone was asleep. People assumed I could not sleep because Amjad was away, and I was restless. This was very true, but curiosity was what pulled me to the locked door night after night.

I don’t want you to think badly of me, I saw him as a confidante; not really an older brother, because he was younger than me, and boyish in his ways too – raazdan is the only word that can accurately describe it. We never saw each other, it was only fitting. I was, after all, married to Amjad and very much in love with him – perhaps distance did make the heart grow fonder. My letters to Amjad speak as much – I would not show those letters even to you, Shabbo Rani!

But Salim understood me, and my desire to see the world, and how it conflicted with my rigid views about the zenana.

“Your place is not here, begum, it is in the bright yellow afternoon in Hyde Park, in England where the sun shines till ten o’clock in the summer”, he’d say. “Begum, I have found this perfect little spot to hide treasure – where two apple trees crisscross in the park, a left from Speakers’ Corner and fifty feet as the crow flies”.
Such a boy, I tell you, adventure and treasure were no fantasy for him, they were that real.

I met Salim in October, by next September Amjad sent word that he would be returning in two months. The day I received the letter was the day Salim disappeared. No one ever heard of him again, not even when Ariba Hasan, you remember our second cousin, went to Rome and tried to look him up – rumour had it that had been planning to run off to Italy for a long time.

I might have been the last one to speak to Salim before he vanished...

He heard the news of Amjad’s impending return and said mysteriously, “There is something I have ordered to be made for you, begum, in Venice. A curio especially for you, to thank you for your patience. You will find it when the time is right, and I hope you do not find it soon, because I know you would forget me otherwise, but your curiosity will keep you from forgetting!”
I asked him what it was, what curio?
But he said if he tried to pass to me, the crack in the door would open so wide it could never be mended.

“You’ll find it, begum, it rests where you belong”.



Shabnam, I can’t tell you the anguish this little mystery caused me. Amjad, as you know, never returned, God bless his soul. My heart was broken, I was widowed after having spent no more than a few months with my husband. When I needed a friend the most, my Salim was nowhere to be found. I searched high and low for him, and for that accursed curio he had promised me – I was certain it would lead me to him. I asked everyone, I abandoned all shame, revealing I had been talking to him – I was a widow, I had no need for pretence – I had never been in love with Salim, I was not adulterous, he was my friend, keeper of my secrets. I asked everyone we knew, everyone who knew him. By then we had international dialling on our telephone, I telephoned people in Italy whose numbers I had to hunt for like a raving lunatic. I looked for him in London, seeing England through the eyes of our sisters who would call from there, and report, always, nothing, nothing, give it up, Aapi, give it up, he has left us, forget him, have you no shame left, grieve for your dead husband.

It came back to me years later, when you had also moved to London. That is why I let go of any remaining concerns of propriety and asked you and your husband – bless him, he’s a saint – to fly me to England. Don’t feel bad, Shabbo, jaan, I really missed you, but you were not the only reason for my wanting to come here. It came back to me, you see, his silly treasure map! It was in Hyde Park, buried, it had to be!

I wonder sometimes whether it was all a ploy to draw me out of my zenana, travel to his England, his London. But how did he know I would do it for him? Travel all the way? What if I were married still? But these are questions that have no answer, Shabbo, no answer.

This is what I found. It’s a paperweight. I mean it was. Now it’s just fragments, of course. I could see the paper inside it, it was made to be broken to read the note inside the glass.

You can read it, go ahead. It is very simple, all it says is

“It was you, my begum –
Where love exists under the earth,
And the lover is here”


I honestly don’t know whether he is even alive still, but I doubt it, Shabbo. My curiosity led me to the elusive curio, but it can’t lead me to him. How did he know I’d come all this way? I never even loved him. How was he so sure?

You made a mistake, Shabnam, you thought you’d get a mystery story out of me. But this is not the kind of mystery that can ever be solved.

What time is it? Ten? Look outside, I don’t understand this country, the sun is still shining.


[Excuse this random detail: Winner of creative writing contest at Litmus 2008, LSR, DU]

Memoirs: My last trip to London!

THERE AND BACK AGAIN

(This was a report I had to give in to ITC, my sponsors, to which company I had pledged brand loyalty until I started reading Marxism in college! I unerathed this at home, while looking for something else in a CD promisingly labelled "PC Backup". I wrote this just after the trip, so that was sometime July, 2004. Funny.)

[ December 16, 2004: The first time I hear of the Grand Prize – a trip to London.

June 6, 2005: After a whirlwind experience at Mumbai and at Delhi, before I know it, I’m on a plane to London.]

DAY 1:

It’s an early start. At two a.m., half asleep, my mother and I board the British Airways flight from Indira Gandhi International and sleep through most of it.

Immigration counters, conveyor belts and 10 hours later, we are out of Heathrow and into the damp, cold morning. It’s London all right.

*

Our hotel in Bayswater turns out to be a lovely three-star inn on a tree-lined square off busy Queensway.

We are quite exhausted, but manage to walk along Queensway and later, along the famous Oxford Street.

A soak in the tub, some local FM and early bed.

DAY 2:

Ah, the day of the H-O-H-O (er…the Hop-On-Hop-Off ) Tour.

The weather clears up and it stays warm the rest of our stay.

We spend the day cruising the streets of London and Westminster in an open red double-decker bus; stopping at sites from the historic (St. Paul’s Cathedral, Trafalgar Square, Tower of London) to the curious (a pub called ‘Hung, Drawn and Quartered’, and monument called, well, ‘Monument’).

But the best part is when Big Ben chimes, “Come Back Whittington”.

Post tour I fall asleep in sunny Hyde Park with a bucket of strawberries by me.

DAY 3:

The Evan Evans Tours coach-bus starts its all-day journey to Oxford and Stratford through the charming Cotswolds.

Walking through Oxford University, both my eyes take in all the familiar names - the colleges of Trinity, Christchurch and Exeter- but my mind’s eye sees myself studying there someday.

*

We soon reach Shakespeare’s Stratford-on-Avon, listening to our guide quote effortlessly from Merchant of Venice. Inside Shakespeare’s Tudor home, we walk on the same stone floor as he must have paced, thinking, “To be or not to be”.

Nearby, Anne Hathaway’s cottage nestles among pretty flowers, housing the very bench on which Shakespeare proposed to Anne.

A nice touch is English Tea in the teashop outside.

Back in London and highly inspired, we call it a (wonderful!) day.

DAY 4:

We become celebrities for a day, walking the red carpet with our favourite stars and famous heads of state. No, not at the live8 concert, but at Madame Tussaud’s.

Next a stop at 221 b, Baker St., home to the great Sherlock Holmes, and now to a museum in his name.

The rest of the afternoon is the bit I love. A ‘Beatles Walk’ around town: the Magical Mystery Tour that ends at Abbey Road.

DAY 5:

A dream come true – the Evan Evans guided tour of Westminster Abbey is the most awe-inspiring and fantastic experience ever!

We walk among greats like Shakespeare, Newton, Auden, Eliot, Johnson and Churchill, and marvel at Queen Elizabeth and William the Confessor.

History there does not just stay. It lives.

DAY 6:

All too soon, I feel, it’s already time to go. Truly, London has some magnetism to it.

But on the way to the airport, as we look at the photographs, we smile and say, “Wow” because nothing else can describe the trip.

What’s left to tell?

We get home to India safe and sound and then back to Lucknow to family and friends eager to hear the tale firsthand.

*

So here I am, my feet back on the ground (finally!).

Still,

Nothing could match the feeling I had when London swept me away.

Londres!

Some old dreams of mine seem childish to me now; but some are still under the always-wanted-never-did category.

Busking in Tottenham Court Road Tube Station.

Trillions Apart

I weep when I hear John Lennon sing,
And I wept when George Harrison died.
I took out dad’s old tapes and listened to GH play Here Comes the Sun alone
And I cried.
I walked across Abbey Road.

I weep when I hear my mother’s old house in Gole Market has been demolished years ago.
I weep when my grandfather tells me of his days in Kalpathy, at Annamalai, in Cuttack, in Srinagar and in Sudan.

I wept when I read the stories my grandmother wrote in Tamil, in English
and were published after she died;
Stories about ourselves.

I jump for joy when I realise I live in the place that gave birth to Golgappa, Puchka, Panipuri and Batasha.
And laugh when I realise further that they are all the same thing
and delicious all.

I walked through the pines that rise on one side and fall on the other side of the road
in Ranikhet in the Kumaon hills.

I picked up pebbles from the bottom of Kempty Falls in Mussoorie
And sand from underneath my feet at Kanyakumari.

I have between the pages of my books
Maple from Toronto and Silver Oak from Lansdowne in Uttaranchal.

I walked barefoot on Eleko Beach;
that rests, on one side, on Lagos
and on the other, on the Atlantic.

I touched the Eiffel Tower at the foot because I could not afford to take the lift to the top.
I always put a coin in the guitar-case of a busker.

I fell asleep in Hyde Park,
The bright sun on my face
and the boys playing football - or is it soccer? -
teams of Shirts and No-Shirts.

Whenever I drive through Rajpath I crane my neck out of the auto-rickshaw
to see Parliament House on one side and IndiaGate on the other.
I get goosepimples whenever I hear the National Anthem
of India
of Nigeria.

Is Delhi - where I study - my home?
Or is Lucknow - where I live -?
Is Lagos - where I grew up - my hometown
Or is it Hyderabad - where I was born?

Am I an Indian?
A Palakkad Iyer?
Am I a traveller
Or just lost?

I belong everywhere
And so I belong nowhere.

Who am I?
Or can I never hope to answer that
while I sing
in Tamil, in English, in Hindi, in Spanish, in French, in Arabic, in Assamese, in Gujarati, in Bengali, in Italian and in every language singable.

I search for languages unknown
That everyone will understand
But no one can claim

And I search.