Tunnel Vision (21 page)

‘
Leave my father out of this.
'

‘
It really has. One, he was a professor. Everyone in the education sector works shorter hours. It might be just as challenging, if not more, than other jobs,
'
he added hastily as he caught the expression brewing on her face,
‘
it
'
s just less time-intensive. That
'
s all I
'
m saying.
'

‘
No it
'
s not. Most of his time at home was spent preparing lectures and making papers.
'

‘
Yes, but he was home, wasn
'
t he? In the next room, at the table, in the bathroom. I can
'
t match that. I can
'
t take you with me, and my work can
'
t leave the office.
'

‘
Why don
'
t you do work that can then?
'
Ammi was still pouting.

‘
Jahan, we
'
ve been over this. It
'
s too late to change tracks, even if I wanted to.
'

‘
So you admit you don
'
t even want to!
'

‘
Why should I? I
'
m not ashamed of what I do. I help the city run smoothly. I think that
'
s something I can be proud of.
'

‘
Of course. God forbid people shouldn
'
t pay their motor vehicle taxes on time, where would the world be then?
'

‘
So Ayesha,
'
Abba nudged me,
‘
what do you think of your little sister?
'

I giggled.

‘
Leave her out of this,
'
Ammi snapped.

‘
She
'
s sitting right here.
'

‘
Children should stay out of adult conversations.
'

‘
Adults shouldn
'
t have certain conversations when children are around.
'

‘
Ayesha, go to your room!
'

‘
I
'
m still eating.
'

‘
Take your plate with you.
'

‘
Let her eat in peace.
'

‘
Don
'
t tell me how to run my house! I don
'
t interfere in your work, don
'
t you interfere in mine. This house is my office.
'

‘
This is my home too,
'
Abba said gently.

‘
And that
'
s unfair considering how much time you spend in it.
'

I picked up my plate and went to my room.

‘
Things will be better soon,
'
I heard him say before I closed the door,
‘
I won
'
t have to do so much grunt work when I get that promotion, and we
'
ll eat together every day.
'
But we didn
'
t.

JANAM SAMJHA KARO

BACK OF RICKSHAW

~

M
y father liked to call himself a self-made man. He wasn
'
t born into a particularly
‘
good
'
family (not a Syed anywhere in the lineage) or very well educated, but rather had clambered up the ladder of social evolution through sheer hard work. The only son of illiterate peasants from Bihar, after finishing primary and middle school in a nearby village, he had moved to Hyderabad in his teens to try his luck in the big city. Working nights as a waiter in a hotel, he had managed to put himself through high school and then earned a Bachelor of Commerce from a public university. That
'
s where he had met Ammi. She was a year junior to him, the daughter of one of his professors. Her father had been against the match from the start.

‘
Why isn
'
t Nana smiling in any of his pictures?
'
I had asked once as we looked through their old album.

‘
Because your nana was always thinking of very serious things,
'
Ammi had said primly.

‘
Because your nana was a grump,
'
Abba had added.

Ammi shot him a look, and he threw up his hands in mock-surrender,
‘
Because thinking of serious things makes you look serious all the time.
'

‘
How come you
'
re always smiling then? Don
'
t you do serious things at work?
'

‘
Apparently not,
'
he had grinned,
‘
I
'
m really just a good-for-nothing, like your nana said I was.
'

‘
Why did he say that?
'

‘
He never said that,
'
Ammi said fiercely,
‘
He really liked your father. He said you were a good student.
'

‘
But not good enough for you, Jahan, I didn
'
t have the pedigree.
'

‘
What
'
s a pedigree?
'

‘
Breed.
'

‘
Like dogs have?
'

‘
Yes. Like dogs have.
'

‘
Mrs Arif said dogs were impure. Are you impure too?
'

‘
If only you knew!
'

‘
Aslam!
'

‘
Sorry, Jahan. No Ashoo, I
'
m as pure as they come.
'

‘
And Nana was a nice man?
'

‘
Nana was a great man.
'

‘
I wish I had met him.
'

‘
I wish you had too,
'
Ammi said, was she crying?
‘
But he
'
s with us in a sense now. This house is ours because of him.
'

‘
Did he give it to us?
'

‘
He sold his own house so we could buy this one,
'
there was a resigned sadness in her tone, and Abba was looking more uncomfortable by the moment.

‘
Where did he go then?
'

‘
He lived with your Baray Mamu for a while, then he went to meet his Maker.
'

‘
Did he ever live in this house?
'

‘
He never came to Pakistan.
'

‘
Why did you come then? I wouldn
'
t want to leave Abba,
'
I went and put my arms around his neck.

Ammi was crying openly now. She got up and disappeared into the bathroom.

‘
She didn
'
t want to leave hers either, little luddo,
'
Abba pulled my ear,
‘
she did it for me.
'

‘
Couldn
'
t you and Nana live in the same place so she didn
'
t have to choose? Other families all live together. Anjum from my class lives with her Nana, Nani and her Khalas and Mamus too.
'

‘
No we couldn
'
t.
'

‘
Did you fight? Anjum says sometimes they fight but everyone forgets about it in a day or so.
'

‘
No. But if we hadn
'
t come, we would never have had you and you would never have had us and the sun would probably never have come up again.
'

‘
Oh. You did do the right thing then.
'

‘
Thank you for approving.
'

‘
No problem.
'

We went for a walk to buy ice cream for Ammi. She wouldn
'
t eat it at first, still sniffing into her handkerchief, but relented when we refused to eat ours as well. Then we raced to see who could finish first. I did. I won a lot of informal competitions with my parents. Except, naturally, the ones that really mattered.

*

Abba and Ammi seemed closer together in the weeks following the argument that wasn
'
t about Nana. She would slave away in the kitchen from early morning preparing his favourite South Indian dishes, leaving me to potter aimlessly, unsupervised, through the rest of the house. Tables, shelves, prohibited desk drawers, everything was fair game for my nimble fingers. I knew I wasn
'
t supposed to be searching through their personal space, that is why I said nothing about the pictures I found stashed in Abba
'
s desk, tucked between the back of the drawer and the table.

MERAY DADDY NAY LI HAI BIMA POLICY, LA KAY AMMI KO DI HAI BIMA POLICY

JINGLE OF INSURANCE COMPANY AD IN
‘
90S.

~

T
here were four postcards, and one picture. The postcards featured Anglo-looking women in various stages of undress, above the name
‘
Lucky Gentleman
'
s club
'
and the line
‘
You
'
re not dreaming!
'
They weren
'
t bad looking, but my mother
'
s breasts were bigger.

The picture looked strangely familiar, a very fair woman with light eyes in a sleeveless dress that dangled fetchingly around her knees, smiling into the camera against the backdrop of the sea. The Arabian Sea? Our sea? Rifling through the postcards again, I realized why she looked familiar. She was the topless woman on two of the postcards. She was all dolled-up in the postcards, and looked younger and fresher in the photo, but that gap-toothed smile was distinct. Unique.

‘
What are you doing?
'
Ammi called out as she emerged from the kitchen.

Dropping the cards and picture back into the drawer and closing it as rapidly as I could without making a sound, I dropped to my stomach and peered under the desk.

‘
Ayesha?
'
Ammi
'
s sandalled feet stopped an inch from my nose.
‘
What are you doing, you silly child? You
'
ll get your clothes dirty.
'

‘
Have you seen my new eraser, Ammi?
'
I clambered to my feet and looked right into her eyes.
‘
I was using it at the dining table when I was doing my homework earlier but now I can
'
t find it.
'

‘
It wasn
'
t under the desk?
'

I shook my head and looked sad.

‘
It
'
s probably somewhere in your room then. You
'
re always losing things and then finding them two minutes later. Come,
'
she held out her hand,
‘
I
'
ll help you look.
'

We searched my room. Miraculously, my eraser was right where I had left it, in my pencil-box.

‘
You have to learn to focus more, Ashoo,
'
Ammi had said as she smoothed out an imaginary line on my bedspread.
‘
Honestly, sometimes I think you can
'
t see things even when they
'
re right in front of you.
'

‘
Maybe I need glasses.
'

‘
Maybe,
'
she eyed me appraisingly,
‘
but they
'
ll spoil that pretty face of yours.
'

‘
I
'
m not as pretty as you are.
'

‘
Says who?
'

‘
Says lots of people.
'

‘
Ignore them, you
'
re much better looking than I am. You know why?
'

‘
Why?
'
I knew what was coming.

‘
Because you look like your father, and he
'
s the handsomest man in the world.
'

She went back outside and settled into a chair to read her weekly rag, meaning I had no way of replacing the picture and cards exactly how I had found them. If I didn
'
t, Abba would know someone had been in his drawer. He would ask Ammi and she would say no, and that left only me.

Were they even his postcards, I wondered. Maybe they were one of the Mamus
'
. They were the only other men who were familiar enough with the house to know all the good hiding places. And some man must have hidden them. I was old enough to know men weren
'
t supposed to see women without their clothes on. Not even their daughters, after a certain age. I didn
'
t know if that was true of wives too, but I had certainly never seen Abba with Ammi without her shirt on.