Look, I am folding my hands in entreaty. I am touching your feet.
Don’t overturn the full saucers of my breasts. Don’t burn the warm and soft blood-carded globules of flesh. Don’t break the ropes of the swings that hang from my arms. Don’t rob my ears of the songs that I hear in its cries.
Don’t snatch it… Don’t … Don’t take it away from me.… For God’s sake, don’t take it away!
Lahore, 21 January: The police recovered a newborn baby girl from the washermen’s colony. It was found by the roadside shivering with cold. Some heartless beast had wound a piece of cloth tightly around the infant’s neck. A dripping wet cloth had been wrapped about its delicate body so that it would die of hypothermia. But it was alive. It was a beautiful girl. It had blue eyes. The police took her to the hospital.
COMFORT
It was exactly eight years ago. My friend, Vishveshwarnath’s bridal party was lodged at the beautiful banquet hall in front of the Hindu Sabha College. It was a party of about three hundred to three hundred fifty guests who, having listened to the songs of Lahore’s famous courtesans, now lay fast asleep on their cots in the many rooms of the banquet hall.
It was 4 a.m. I was still somewhat tipsy from all the whisky a small group of friends and I had consumed with the groom in a separate room. When the round clock in the hall struck four, I opened my eyes. Perhaps I had been dreaming, because I felt something lodged between my eyelashes.
I looked at the floor of the hallway with one eye, keeping the other closed so it could sleep some more. Everyone was fast asleep. Some lay on their stomach, some flat and some huddled up. I opened my other eye and remembered that last night Asghar Ali had insisted on sleeping with a bolster pillow. The bolster lay a short distance away from my head but there was no sign of Asghar Ali.
I thought perhaps he had been awake all night and was now sleeping it off on the grubby bed of some cheap prostitute in Rambagh.
Whisky, whether it was local or foreign, was like a fast train for Asghar that took him post haste to a woman. Almost ninety-nine per cent men are drawn towards beautiful objects after downing a couple of drinks, whereas Asghar — who was actually a very fine painter and photographer who knew how best to use lines and colours — always made the most crass pictures after he got drunk.
The smithereens of a dream dislodged from my eyes and I began to think of Asghar Ali who was certainly no dream. I could clearly see the imprint of his heavy, long-haired body on the pillow.
Despite having observed him at close quarters, on many occasions I could never quite fathom why Asghar turned ‘silly’ after a couple of drinks. Maybe I shouldn’t say silly because he actually became terrifyingly crude and coarse, and could stumble through the darkest lanes and by-lanes and find his way to some woman selling her body. The next morning, when he would arise from her filthy bed, go home, take a bath and reach his studio to take pictures of well-scrubbed and well-groomed young girls and women, there would be no trace left of the previous night’s bestiality that had been so plainly visible through his drunken stupor.
Believe me when I say he was like a man possessed when drunk. For a brief spell of time, his mind would lose the power to think and feel. How much can a man drink? Six, seven, eight pegs? With him, even six or seven sips of that deadly brew were enough to push him into the fathomless sea of oblivion. You can mix whisky with soda or water, but mixing it with a woman is beyond my comprehension. Some drink to forget their sorrows, but a woman is not a sorrow. Some drink to create noise and confusion, but a woman is neither noise nor confusion.
Last night, Asghar got terribly drunk and noisy. Most weddings are noisome affairs, so Asghar’s din got absorbed in the general bedlam; or else there would have been hell to pay. At some point in the evening, he picked up a glass full of whisky and walked out of the room saying, ‘I am a superior person, and I shall find a suitably high place to sit and drink.’
I thought he had wandered off in search of a suitably ‘high’ brothel somewhere in Rambagh, but a short while later the door opened and he walked in carrying a stepladder. He propped the ladder against the wall, climbed it and sat sipping his whisky on the highest rung, with his head nearly touching the ceiling.
With some difficulty, Vishveshwar and I managed to persuade him to climb down, telling him all the while that such antics are all right only when no one else is around. The banquet hall was full of guests and he must be quiet and decorous. God knows how, our entreaties penetrated his thick skull and for the remainder of the party he sat quietly in one corner sipping his share of the whisky.
Thinking of last night’s events, I got up and went to stand in the balcony outside. In front of me the red brick building of the Hindu Sabha College stood mutely in the still darkness of pre-dawn. I looked towards the sky and saw stars trembling in the muddy sky.
As I crossed the long verandah and reached the staircase, I could hear someone coming down. A few seconds later, Asghar came into sight and walked past me without so much as a glance in my direction. It was dark, I thought as I started climbing the stairs slowly, perhaps he didn’t see me.
Whenever I climb a staircase, I count the stairs. I had just mumbled ‘twenty-four’ when, suddenly, I found a woman standing on the last step. I got flustered because I had very nearly collided with her.
‘Forgive me.… Oh! It’s you!’
The woman was Sharda. She was the eldest daughter of Harnam Kaur, one of our acquaintances, and she had been widowed just one year after her marriage.
Before I could ask her anything else, she spoke with urgency, ‘Who was that man who has just gone down?’
‘Who?’
‘The man who just went down the stairs … Do you know him?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Who is he?’
‘Asghar.’
‘Asghar!’ She very nearly bit the name through clenched teeth and in a flash I understood what must have transpired between them.
‘Did he do something impolite?’
‘Impolite?’ Sharda’s body trembled with rage. ‘Who does he think I am…?’ Tears welled up in her small eyes. ‘He …He ….’ Her voice caught in her throat and, covering her face with both her hands, she began to cry loudly and with complete abandon.
I was in a strange dilemma. I began to worry that if someone were to hear her cry and come up, there would be a hue and cry.
Sharda had four brothers and all four were sleeping somewhere in the building. Two of them were especially fond of picking up violent quarrels. Surely, nothing could save Asghar Ali now.
I began to reason with her, ‘Look here, I say, stop crying … someone will hear.’
She removed her hands from her face and spoke in a loud petulant voice, ‘Let them … I want people to hear … Who does he think I am? A whore? I … I ….’
Once again, her voice caught in her throat.
‘I think it would be best to bury this matter here and now.’
‘Why?’
‘It will cause disgrace.’
‘To whom? To him or to me?’
‘It will be his disgrace, of course but no good ever comes of putting your hands in mud.’ So saying, I pulled out my handkerchief and gave it to her. ‘Here, wipe your tears.’
She flung the handkerchief away and flounced off to sit on the topmost stair. I picked up my handkerchief, dusted it and put it back in my pocket. ‘Sharda, Asghar is my friend. I seek your forgiveness for whatever mistake he has committed.’
‘Why are you asking for forgiveness?’
‘Because I want this matter to end right here. Though, if you want, I can bring him here and make him draw lines on the floor in front of you with his nose.’