No God in Sight (3 page)

The interviewer looks at Rukhshana. ‘And Mrs. Bootwala, what do you do?’

‘I’m a housewife. Kids, you know.’ Rukhshana ruffles the hair on one of their heads.

The embassy man points at our forms. ‘You say here you’ll be visiting your friend in Seattle. Is that right?’

I start to speak, ‘Uh yes, sir, that…’

But my reply is nipped by an Indian woman who enters from a door behind the interviewer.

She doesn’t even look at us. ‘Here you go, Steve!’ She hands the American a sheet of paper and leaves.

He squints at it. And upon reading the contents of the sheet, our interviewer’s face reddens; his thin lips virtually disappear. He looks up at us and presses the sheet against the glass screen. ‘Man! Can you
believe
this?’

SHIT!

JUNAID!

They must have tracked his visa application from two years ago!

They must know my elder brother hasn’t returned!

They will stamp ‘Rejected Forever’ on our passports and fling them at our faces.

I panic in the face of failure: ‘I have all my documents, sir!’ I hold up the folder. ‘My bank statements, tax returns, property papers. All latest, all in order!’

Our interviewer frowns, ‘What’re you talking about?’

Then he shivers the sheet impatiently and begins reading, ‘Get a load a’ this bull. Blah blah blah…
embassy personnel are to observe regular working hours on Saturday 25th owing to vast task backlogs
…
blah
blah
blah
…
many thanks, sincerely
…’

He looks up murderously. ‘You tell me, Mr. Bootwala, do I look like a machine?’

It’s like God being facile on Judgment Day—you have to go along without seeming slavish or impudent.

I stare like a nitwit.

‘It’s…it’s very unfair for you?’ Rukhshana offers with caution.

Our interviewer nods vigorously. ‘Thank you, Mrs. Bootwala! I mean, a six-day week? It’s criminal! Like we don’t work hard enough!’

I frown and smack my lips. Rukhshana purrs empathetically. The twins maintain a sensitive stillness. The American stamps four pink slips and slides them through an opening. They fall into a stainless-steel receptacle on our side.

‘I’m tellin’ ya,’ he continues, stacking our passports like playing cards, ‘if this was America, this embassy would a’ been busted for malpractice.’

I stare at the pink slips.

‘Go on, take the receipts, you got your six-month visas,’ the American says. The simplicity of our success is stunning. ‘Pay your money now and pick up your passports in the afternoon, all right?’

Rukhshana and I begin glutting him with thank-yous. He waves us out modestly.

‘Hey, Bootwalas!’ the American shouts after we step out. We stick our heads into the cubicle. ‘You know where to find me this Saturday, right?’ he roars.

We erupt into joyous, guttural laughter.

In the taxi, Rukhshana and I exchange grins over our twins’ heads. We won’t have to go to an immigration expert after all.

I look out the window, at the grey urban landscape whizzing by. The traffic feels comical now, the beggars seem charismatic in their wretchedness, fumes from trucks and buses tickle our sinuses, and when Hamid’s asthma acts up like it always does—he was born with it—Rukhshana cuddles him and covers his face with her sari. ‘Shh…’

Hhzzz. My son’s wheezing struggles to be heard over the din of electric horns, old engines, bus bells, and barking dogs. Farid clutches his brother’s hand. ‘Roll up the windows,’
Rukhshana says. The taxi driver and I obey. Rukhshana rubs Hamid’s tiny chest. The old anger returns. Hhzzz. Rukhshana and I exchange helpless glances. ‘Shh… shh…’ Hhzzz. Hhzzz. This dusty, dirty country. This dump of a subcontinent that will kill each one of us.

Hamid, exhausted by the attack, falls asleep. I extricate Farid’s hand from his brother’s death-like grip.

The taxi pulls up outside our colony. ‘Take an off today?’ Rukhshana tempts me. I hand her Hamid.

‘Start packing, we’ll fly as soon as possible,’ I say.

Rukhshana seems alarmed.

I close my eyes reassuringly. ‘We’ll manage.’ I pat the taxi driver’s shoulder. ‘Let’s go.’

In half an hour I am at the shoe shop. I stand outside on the footpath and look up at True Shoe, at the cream and black signboard, at the tinted glass entrance and the barely stocked shelves of footwear inside.

There are no customers. When I enter, Malik and Bhupendra, the two salesmen, don’t stand up, they don’t even stir. Since Kaka’s death nine days ago, employee morale has plunged.

‘How’s business?’

‘Cold,’ Malik mumbles.

I sit in the leather chair behind the cash counter. The bill book indicates only one sale for the day. A pleasant surprise, actually, considering there’s nothing in stock but outdated
ladies’ sandals, Hawaii chappals and kids’ shoes.

I load two envelopes with three thousand rupees each. ‘Get your bags,’ I say.

Malik and Bhupendra remove their plastic bags from the closet. They come to the counter. I stand up to give them their last and final pay. They don’t ask unnecessary questions. Did I get my visa? When am I leaving? My salesmen are smart. I was worried for Kaka, but he, like everything else, is now a closed chapter, finished and done under six feet of fertile graveyard grime.

‘Best of luck, Amin-bhai,’ Bhupendra says.

‘Ya-ali-madad, Amin-bhai,’ Malik says as he follows his colleague through the door.

‘Mowla-ali-madad,’ I say. ‘Down the shutter half!’

Malik nods.

And probably for the first time in forty years the shutter of True Shoe stands at half mast at three in the afternoon on a normal, working, non-holiday.

Here’s how it will happen:

I will telephone Mr. Lakhani.

Before sunset he will arrive at the shop with a briefcase containing money and I will sign away this 300 sq. ft., forty-year-old institution of sorts for fifty-three lakh rupees, seven lakhs below its market value.

The house will be in a mess when I return. The kids will
be at the neighbor’s. Rukhshana will be hyperventilating over all the things that need packing, all the things that need salvaging, saving, stowing. I will seat her on the bed. I will place my hands on her shoulders and tell her to take just our clothes, that’s it, only our clothes.

A week later—after seven days of shopping, discarding and disconnecting—my wife, my two children, and I will come out of our flat for what I hope will be the last time in our lives. The time will be nine p.m. We will have five whole hours to go before takeoff. I will padlock the main door to the house; we will already have sealed its windows and switched off its electric main.

We will haul five suitcases into the back of and atop the roof of a taxi. My carryall will contain photographs of my parents, Rukhshana’s parents, and of our vacations—first as a couple and then as a family.

On our way to the airport we will keep the windows up.

We will become worried and impatient in the long check-in line. The police will question us. Passport officials will question us. I will answer patiently. I may even smile.

And finally we will have finished with all formalities. We will haul our hand luggage and our children toward the departure lounge.

Two hours later we will board the plane. And my children, like children are wont to before takeoff, will start
crying, screaming, bawling. Other children will join in like members of a sullen choir.

Below the howl of takeoff, the city of our birth—the nation of our ancestors—will fade into a twinkling sprawl of lights and then into a distant flicker and then it will be gone, gobbled and blackened by distance.
It wasn’t worth it,
I will tell myself. And I will repeat, like a mantra, like a dua,
it wasn’t worth it, it wasn’t worth it.
And even then, if my idiot nostalgia refuses to die, I will remember the protection money demanded, the covert and blatant religious slurs, the riots, the aftermaths, the newborn niece named Nidhi, the rewritten history books, the harassment at the passport office. Wasn’t it enough, wasn’t it enough that we lived in our ghettos and worked in our holes and paid our taxes and demanded nothing in return?

The aircraft’s projection screen will show a blue India, with our plane’s route so far outlined in white like an anemic tapeworm in the belly of a diseased nation.

I will sit back in my seat and pretend to breathe easy.
Forget it,
I will tell myself,
let go.
Let them have it, let them have what they have killed clergymen for, razed mosques for, driven out fellow Indians for.

Let them have their Hindustan for Hindus.

Namaste. My name is Babua. I live in Barauli, a village like any other village.

Today is my sixteenth birthday.

It is mid-morning. I am napping on a charpoy under a hay shack located on the outer edge of my father’s orchard. I hear a lascivious giggle. I open my eyes and find Lajwanti, the most recent addition to our gaggle of village nymphos, lolling against one of the poles. She is wearing a yellow skirt and a red come-hither blouse. ‘What you want?’ I say.

‘Aye, take me rey,’ she says.

Lajwanti is a worker’s daughter. I am overjoyed that I, the landlord’s son, have been included in this working-class sweet-sixteen deflowering tradition. Truly, there is nothing more democratic than sex. ‘Let’s go!’ I say.

I follow Lajwanti into the cornfields. She stretches out in a clearing. I remove pertinent items of my clothing. Lajwanti parts pertinent segments of her anatomy. Then she waits and
waits. ‘What’s wrong?’ she says.

I don’t know! I am trying my best!

‘Thoo-thoo!’ Lajwanti says. She stands up, dusts her clothes and skips off, giggling cruelly.

I lie there in a corny, horny daze.

That’s right: my very first chance to khutt-khutt and my tools have failed me. I can’t believe it!

After the Lajwanti disaster I think about running away to escape the dishonor. Thankfully, she runs away first—to become an actress.

Lajwanti’s departure means my secret is safe. But my problem persists. I start peeping into my dhoti several times a day, praying, hoping and begging for something to happen.

After that day in the fields I read no books, watch no serials, and hear no music. My days begin and end obsessing over the morgue in my dhoti.

A year later, I turn seventeen.

‘You are a man now, Babua!’ father announces.

‘You are old enough to shoulder my corpse!’ grandfather says with his characteristic morbidity.

I am hoping my sires’ baritones will impress my necropolis. Alas, my tools are deader and deafer than I thought. Nothing stirs.

Then, one afternoon, after gazing at my jewels for many, many hours, the error of my ways smacks me on the head. I
fasten my dhoti. What eggs hatch when watched, haanh? I realize I have to find something else to do. I have to think of anything other than…

So I go looking for father and find him hunched over a sapling in our orchard. ‘Give me something to do,’ I say.

‘There is nothing to do,’ father looks up and replies. He sweeps his hand over our huge orchard crammed with workers and trees, ‘I have worked hard, so your sons and your sons’ sons don’t have to lift a finger. Just relax, Babua.’

I squat beside father. ‘You don’t understand. I can’t have sons if I don’t do anything.’

He is aghast. ‘What do you mean? You will marry a woman, then you will have children…’

I make a face. ‘It’s not that simple, okay!’

Father cries, ‘It is! You are a man just like me and your grandfather!’

I ask, ‘Why?’

Father replies,
‘Why?
What
why
? Be gone, Babua, your questions aggravate me.’

I stand up. ‘A nice way to dismiss a man, haanh, Baba?’ I deliver my parting shot and return to the spot behind the well to look inside my dhoti.

What should I do? Oho-rey,
I cry to myself,
what should I do?
I want to be a man like my grandfather; a man like my father, whose rare words and ample riches make people tremble. I want to be like the barber, doctor, bus driver, and
even our orchard workers—they are all men, siring sons like rabbits, unmindful of their bodies.

Mahant Suyansh would say,
Men must fulfill their dharma.

I don’t have any dharma. Mahant Suyansh, on the other hand, has loads of it. He is our local sage and seer. On his monthly visits to Barauli, he mounts a chair on our porch, furls in his saffron robes and addresses the villagers. The Mahant’s discourses are unintelligible. But we are all mesmerized by his immersion. Once, to demonstrate the mythical marriage of some god with some goddess, the Mahant had stabbed his thumb and smeared blood on his widow’s peak; the details I never did catch, but I will never forget the blood trickling down his forehead.

The Mahant certainly doesn’t waste a moment pondering over his lungi, leave alone what is inside it. Like my ascendants he, too, is a man. Religion and mythos are his wards and he injures himself in their upkeep.

So, am I to remain half a man till I have inherited the orchard? Till I have remained engrossed for hours like father in the selection of manure, am I to think of nothing but my giraffe that won’t lift its neck? Inside my wide chest is an ant’s heart, and in this heart is immense regret for having a lineage that, by giving me everything, has left me with nothing better to do than contemplate the catastrophe in my dhoti.

*

Then, one afternoon (funny how all the important stuff happens in the afternoon), as I am napping in my room, I hear my mother scream, ‘Babua!’

I hear a commotion outside. I panic. ‘What-what?’ I fasten my dhoti and run out of my room. ‘What happened?’ There are several villagers in the veranda. More are gathering by the second.

‘The Mahant!’ mother screams. ‘The Mahant is coming!’

Again?
A second visit to Barauli in the same month? This is extraordinary!

‘Start preparing!’ I shout.

Minutes later, the Mahant hurries in through our gate. Work in the village stops with unprecedented swiftness: the bus driver abandons his vehicle mid-road, women kill the flames under half-boiled pots of rice, and everyone rushes to our courtyard within minutes of the Mahant’s arrival.