Page 1
Ní
ᏇᏅᎼᏅᏨᏅᎼᎩᏍᎤᎣᎼ
Anospecialist
4.
INTERNATIONAL CENTRE FOR
4 4 )4
 

Well, í0No,2

Page 2
Nethra
Journal of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies
2, Kynsey Terrace, Colombo 8, Sri Lanka.
Email: ices(a)icescolombo.org Website: www.icescolombo.org
Nethra will appear three times a year. Subscription rates are:
Sri Lanka Rs. 400 per year
SAARC countries : U.S. $20 per year
Other countries : U.S. $25 per year
All rates are inclusive of mailing costs (by air in the case of foreign readers).
Material appearing in this journal may not be reproduced in any other publication without the written permission of the Editor, Nethra
(C) 2007 International Centre for Ethnic Studies (Colombo)
ISSN 1391 - 2380
Printed by Unie Arts (Pvt) Ltd. No. 48B, Bloemendhal Road, Colombo 13.

May-Aug. 2007 Vol. 10, No.2
Editor Ameena Hussein
International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo

Page 3

Contents
Random Thoughts
Zubeida Mustafa
Girls of Bad Character: an introduction
Manjushree Thapa
Earthquake
Kamila Shamsie
The Sorrow of Women Mamang Dai
Tell me who you know ...
Vaidehi
Sweeping the Front Yard...
Anitha Thampi
Ten Lives and a Woman
Esther David
01
03
08
16
27
82
28

Page 4
The Last Letter
Neeman Sobhan
Shahrazad's Golden Leopard
Muneeza Shamsie
Ranimata
Niaz Zaman
Ishwari's Children
Shabnam Nadiya
The Dance of Mira
Mridula Garg
Autumn Harvest
Feryal Ali Gauhar
17
31
48
57
67
80

Contributors
Zubeida Mustafa is Assistant Editor with Dawn, Pakistan's most widely distributed English language newspaper. She has worked as a research officer at the Pakistan Institute of International Affairs, Karachi.
Manjushree Thapa published her first book in 1992. She publishes fiction and non fiction and her first novel was the first major English novel from Nepal.
Kamila Shamsie has four published novels and a number of short stories. She was twice nominated for the John Llewellyn Rhys award and won the Prime Minister's Award for Literature (Pakistan) and the Patras Bokhari Award (Pakistan).
Mamang Dai is a writer and journalist. She received Arunachal Pradesh's first annual Verrier Elwin prize in the field of publication and print media.
Neeman Sobhan is a writer poet who teaches at the University of Rome.
Vaidehi is the author of numerous short stories. She is also a newspaper columnist and the author of Gulabi Taléies published in 2006. She writes in Kannada.
Esther David has written extensively on her Jewish experience. She is often labeled a Jewish writer and she finds that she is learning to enjoy this status.
Muneeza Shamsie is a Pakistani writer, critic, and editor of three anthologies of Pakistani English literature.
Niaz Zaman is Professor of English at the University of Dhaka. She has published extensively and in 2006 she began writers.ink to publish creative writing in English and English translation.
Shabnam Nadiya is a writer, poet and translator. Her work has appeared in many anthologies. She lives in Dhaka with her husband and daughter.
Mridula Garg writes fiction in Hindi. She received the Hammet-Hellman award for courageous writing from Human Rights Watch in 2001. She has published six novels.
Feryal Ali Gauhar is the author of The Scent of Wet Earth in August and No Space for Further Burials. She has also made a feature film, Tibbi Galli,
Anitha Thampi is a chemical engineer by profession, she has been publishing poetry since 1987. She writes in Malayalam.

Page 5

On the 21" of February 2007 forty odd women from all over the world gathered in New Delhi to celebrate 'the power of the word’. Organised by Women's World which is an international network of feminist writers that addresses issues of gender-based censorship, its aim is to analyse conditions in various countries and to develop a strategy for work on these issues internationally, I was privileged to be a part of them. For four days we discussed and debated topics that covered writing during times of siege, closing spaces in an open market, exclusionary practices, the guarded tongue and culture censorship and voice. It was a time of meeting writers, poets, thinkers, dramatists, film makers, artists and intellectuals. All women, all brilliant.
Many of the participants of the event were asked to contribute to this special issue of Nethra. Read, reflect, enjoy and I am sure you will agree that literature in our part of the world is not only powerful but alive and kicking.
Ameena Hussein

Page 6

RANDOM THOUGHTS INSPIRED BY THE COLLOOUIUM ON “THE POWER OF THE WORD"
Zubeida Mustafa
Gloria Steinem, the American feminist organiser (as she describes herself) says that people must talk, listen and thus connect. That is what 40 or so women from five South Asian countries did at the colloquium on “The Power of the Word'. Held in New Delhi in February, this conference provided a platform for these writers young and old to share their experiences.
For three days they spoke of their anguish, frustrations, and anger as well as their joys, sense of fulfilment as women writers. What has set them apart from other writers and created new challenges for them is the gender factor. As women they have had to cope with additional stress, restrictions, censorship, and their critics have been merciless. But in the process they have emerged stronger, more determined and more inspired. But there have been moments of despair too when they have had to struggle hard to keep their head above the water.
The sharing exercise at the colloquium will have a positive impact on these writers. It did not offer any solution and wasn't meant to. But it provided spiritual strength and resilience to each and every woman who attended. Each participant came with her own distinct problems and experiences. Each went back with a shared sense of being empowered, inspired and reborn.
This exercise in sharing of experience has emerged as a hallmark of the women's movement. Feminist activists strive to reach out and Connect with women to give them the strength to fight their own battles. Ritu Menon, whose brainchild the colloquium was, is a writer, publisher and feminist. For the last several years she has been applying this technique to women writing in Hindi, English and the regional
1

Page 7
languages of India. On this occasion she extended the forum of Women's World (India) to other South Asian countries as well. The writers from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal who joined their fellow wielders of the pen from India in this exercise in interaction enriched the colloquium.
I am not a writer in the creative sense. As a journalist I also weave words - on the computer- and I write about writers. The colloquium helped me gain a better perspective of the conditions in which writers write and the constraints under which they work. As a professional reporting events and projecting the views and ideas of others and commenting on them, the colloquium made me realise that the challenges I face are no less.
Saroop Dhruv and Esther David from Gujarat pointed out that when the communal riots took place in their hometown they were so distraught and traumatised by the carnage that for a long time they could not write about it. Others said that in situations of crisis they felt they could express themselves only after they had internalised the tragedy and that took time.
There was K.R. Meera, a Malayalam author and journalist, who said that as a journalist she was required to report promptly any incideht that took place howsoever she felt about it. There was no time to wait to internalise it and then transfer it into her writing
I could relate to what Dhruv, David and Meera said. That has been my predicament. I am expected to react instantly to events. If I don't I will be obsolete. But sometimes, especially when an event affects people, you want to let things sink into you before you know what you would like to say. But it is not a story you are telling which can be told in due course of time for posterity to read. It is a leader, a news dispatch or a feature you are writing Your reactions have to be quick.
So I mull the contradictions of writing in a time of siege. May be I will find the answer soon.

GIRLS OF BAD CHARACTER:AN INTRODUCTION
Manjushree Thapa
Some good news from Nepal. One of the advantages of being from an unformed state-one in the process of reforming itself, in a revolutionary environment-is that there is the potential for some very fast change.
One example of this is a bill that the women's rights movement was able to pass shortly after the success of the April 2006 democratic movement. Without seeking prior approval of their parties, women parliamentarians such as Vidya Bhandaritabled a bill for women's rights. One of the provisions was to reserve 33% of seats in all government positions for women. Once the bill was tabled, the men would have been too embarrassed not to vote for it; so it passed unanimously. There were complaints afterwards that the women parliamentarians had not got prior approval from their parties. But the deed was done. It is yet to be implemented. But Nepal is unique in South Asia to have such large reservations through all of government, top to bottom. But it may give you a sense of exactly how revolutionary Nepal's mood is right now to know that women are not happy with this. The demand, now, is for reservations of 50 percent.
A second development in the same vein. Recently, while passing out citizenship cards, the government agreed to grant citizenship to someone as both a man and a woman. The gay rights movement in Nepal has been very active; but this kind of breakthrough was still very unexpected. Again, these are revolutionary times.
3

Page 8
There are many efforts on way at present to break new ground, like this. One small group I would like to introduce to you is an underground group, begun in 2004, called the Charitraheen Chelis, or the Girls of Bad Character. It is a group that gets its inspiration from the Gorilla Girls, in New York, who in the 1980's and 1990's were able to highlight many women's rights issues through guerrilla strategies. The Charitraheen Chelis' form of activism is to write through the mainstream media, and to articulate issues that have been ignored or overlooked in the mainstream women's movement. They focus particularly on asserting women's bodies: for as in the rest of South Asia, it is very hard for women to be taken seriously in the intelligentsia unless they negate all discussion of women's bodies. The members of the Charitraheen Chelis are from a variety of fields, and they choose to remain underground so that there are no direct repercussions of what they say.
I would like to read the latest statement by the Charitraheen Chelis, released today in the media in Nepal, both in English and in Nepali. I would like to request that you hear this English translation with a sense of how outrageous it sounds in Nepali. I will add commentary (in italics) to provide some context.
GIRLS OF EVEN WORSE CHARACTER: FEBRUARY 2006 DECLARATION
We, a hardline faction of the notorious underground group, Charitraheen Chelis (Girls of Bad Character), have broken off and declared Nepali women 2utOOOS.
Our breakaway faction, which goes by the name Jhan Charitraheen Cheli (Girls of Even Worse Character), roundly denounces the members of the original Charitraheen Cheli for failing to live up to their bad reputations.

“The chelis of our mau-samuha (mother-group) did not behave badly enough,” says Swekchha, one member of the Girls of Even Worse Character. “Most of them are happily married, with well brought-up children, even. Two chelis have a steady boyfriend-meaning, one each, not one in common! And the others don't seem to like men, or even women,” she complains. "For example, after the 2005 coup they called for a sex boycott till the reinstatement of democracy - but they forgot to call off the boycott after April 2006! We take this as a grave conspiracy,” she adds, explaining, “That is why we had to break away and start our Own underground group.”
The first meeting of the Girls of Even Worse Character took place in mid February in a seedy bar in Kathmandu. It was too cold for us to display any flesh as desired; but we disturbed the peace by loudly denouncing our mother-group, laughing and hooting, and creating general mayhem.
The first item on our agenda was to revisit the historical 40 points' declaration made by our mother-group on March 4, 2005, through our official mouthpieces, Nepali Times and Kantipur, both edited by very dishy men. We discovered that the 40 points are pretty damn good, especially Point No. 1, which asserts our right to take up agendas not because anyone says we should, but purely because we want to.
“That mother-group wasn't all bad,” one member of the Girls of Even Worse Character, was heard admitting.
After re-passing our mother-group's historical 40 points' declaration, we progressed on to press for other, more time-bound matters. Our twelvepoint declarations are therefore as follows:
1. Make love, not regression! We declare that the sex boycott called by our mother-group in 2005 is comprehensively over, retroactive to April 2006, but only for those of the loktantrik persuasion. (This means you're Out of luck if you're a raja, or even a raja in loktantrik disguise).
5

Page 9
Vision 50/50: No penises in Parliament! We demand that till the day 50 percent of seats in Parliament are reserved for women of diverse backgrounds, women of diverse backgrounds should occupy all 100 percent of Parliamentary seats. The same goes for all government bodies! It's 50 percent or bustl
Naturalize foreign sons-in-law. One of our brave chelis has volunteered to sacrifice her independence (temporarily) to marry a foreign man, only to seek full naturalization and citizenship rights forbideshijwais (foreign sons-in-law). Qualified candidates, please apply with CV, photo and statistics.
40 is better than 33 (To one-up the democratic political parties, the Maoists gave not only 33%, but 40% of their parliamentary seats to women). We applaud the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) for filling 40 percent of their Parliamentary seats with women. But why not 50 percent?
But what's with the grey coats? (On the first day that the Maoists came to Parliament, all their MPs, including the women, were wearing identical grey coats to signal their unity). From Mechi (the east) to Mahakali (the west), from the terai to the himals, from the villages to the Parliament, and even at the Fifth Annual Women's Gathering of the CPN(M), Maoist women open their mouths only to repeat the same carefully rehearsed party-approved lines, over and over. Ladies, we invite you to release your individuality from the party's command. Speak your minds freely. Unleash yourself from all uniformity, starting with those coats.
Whipping is for brutes! Women of all the political parties, we beg you! Defy all whips placed by your party denying women's rights. Do not sacrifice our rights for 'more important agendas set by your party's men. You know they will only betray us, yet
again.
New leadership for the New Nepal! We nominate Ram Kumari Jhankri as the first President of Nepal. (She is a student leader of the CPN (United Marxist Leninist).
6

8. Another thing Turn the National Women's Commission into a constitutional body. But first, fill 50 percent of the positions in the Constitutional Council (which forms all constitutional bodies) with women. If not, fill all 100 percent of the positions with women. This goes for all government bodies, starting everywhere!
9. Hello? Office of the High Commission for Human Rights? How many years before a single case comes to trial? We demand that the case over Maina Sunwar's torture and murder in military custody be seen through properly. The case has been registered in the court, and the Police have tried to contact the Army; but 16 letters later, there has been no reply. Perhaps some diplomats have had some insight from their tour of the army barracks? Maybe they could try getting the Army to respond?
10. Don't forget what makes the world go around! We unanimously declare the sexiest man in Nepal to be Sunil Babu Pant of the Blue Diamond Society. (The Blue Diamond Society is Nepal's leading gay rights group. Sunil Babu Pant is is head and openly gay).
11. Donors, back off All your projects and networks and alliances and seminars are keeping our best women too busy to lead the women's movement. Back off, and let these women be, for god's sake. Their country needs them more than your country reports do.
12. Give it up, give it up, give it up! We demand that all our demands be met by March 8, International Women's Day, or else we will declare a nationwide chulo-ra-cholo bandh (stove-and-blouse closure). That's right, boys: No food, and no sex for you. Nada. Zip. Nothing. No joy till you capitulate.
In conclusion, we would like to declare that - following the example of other successful rebel groups before us - we are fully prepared to come aboveground to take part in negotiations, should the government invite us for talks.
Jaya Nari!
The Jhan Charitraheen Chelis

Page 10
Opinion
EARTHQUAKE
Kanila Shamsie
“We were like children who, on the day of a massive storm, go down to the sea and say, come on, let's learn to sail.’
That is one of the first things Uzma Gul said to me when I arrived at the SUNGI office in Muzaffarabad, near the epicentre of the October 8" 2005 earthquake. Uzma, the co-ordinator of SUNGI's Muzaffarabad office, was talking about SUNGI's immersion in relief work in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake; as a local NGO with offices and contacts in the very heart of the affected areas, SUNGI was ideally placed to take part in the relief efforts. The only problem, as Uzma pointed out, is that SUNGI is an NGO that works for the rights of the marginalized; relief work had only ever played a very tiny part in its operations. But the earthquake left no room for bystanders. The only option was to throw yourself into the storm, and learn to sail.
By the time I arrived at SUNGI as a volunteer, nearly two months after the earthquake, everyone in the office had found their sealegs. But as a newcomer to the place, I found myself constantly disbalanced by what I was seeing, despite all the coverage I'd followed in the print and electronic media. On the drive in to Muzaffarabad, I had looked up at the mountains - my first glimpse of Kashmir- and noticed that there were vast slate-coloured strips along the mountains, as though someone had forgotten to put earthand-tree carpeting Over grey underlay. It required Uzma to explain that I was looking at the effects of landslides. Then she pointed to
 

a pile of rubble and told me that used to be a 5-storey hotel, one of the grandest in Muzaffarabad.
You should have seen what it was like here after the earthquake; now you almost don't realize that anything happened here, one of the SUNGI workers said to me during my first day in Muzaffarabad. I could only try and imagine what the place must have looked like 2 months ago, if the present situation with piles of rubble, fallen bridges, roads sliding off mountainsides seemed normal by contrast. And to add to the unreal feeling, there were “tent villages' set up in every empty plot of land, supply trucks lining up along the roads, helicopters taking off and landing every few minutes, and flags everywhere - Oxfam flags, Turkish flags, Islamic Relief flags, UN flags, political-party flags. . .
The flags, of course, couldn't help but serve as reminder that this is Kashmir, that part of the world where the question of nationhood is such a thorny one. Largely, though, there was little talk of politics while I was there. All conversation centred around the earthquake and the relief effort. This doesn't mean that the political situation played no part in events after the earthquake. If you ask people who were the first to help out in rescuing people from the rubble the answer you hear over and over is: mujahideen. They came down from the mountains almost immediately, a SUNGI worker explained to me. These men who we always knew existed, but had never seen. They came with their satellite phones, their SUVs and their extraordinary organization. They pulled so many people out of the rubble - and corpses, too; they would go and recover dead bodies from places no one else wanted to go near. What about the army, I asked? The thing about the army is they lost thousands of their own in the earthquake. So they were frantic getting their injured to hospital, recovering the bodies of their dead. They were in no state then to help anyone else.'

Page 11
During that conversation Uzma laughed as she told me about an American journalist who was covering the relief effort, and seemed particularly interested in talking about the mujahideen. She kept trying to get me to use the word "terrorist' or 'militant and I finally had to say, “This is your language. Here people have always thought of them as freedom-fighters.”
Even with all the destruction that has ravaged Kashmir, it's still one of the most breathtakingly beautiful places I have ever seen. In my first hours there I found myself texting a friend to say: “You can see how a place like this could easily drive young boys to poetry or death. The beauty of the place became particularly apparent to me on my second day in Muzaffarabad - which was my first day out in the field.
Four of us left from the SUNGI office - Sajjad, Rukhshunda, Doctor Sahib’ and myself- to carry outdoor-to-door assessments' in mountain villages as part of a joint project with Save the Children UK (SUNGI is partnered with a number of international NGO's which see the value of its local contacts). Door to door assessment entails going into every house, or tent, and finding out the basic needs of each household. As we approached the village, our jeep stopped and one of SUNGI’s local activists gets in to show us the way. We drove across a wooden bridge and Sajjad told me he was in the first car that went across the bridge after the earthquake - everyone was terrified it would collapse, but there was no other way to get to the people on the other side without time-consuming detours. I looked down at the drop into the valley below and, not for the last time, was awed by the courage that must have been necessary every day in those first days of the relief effort.
The jeep can only take us so far, and then our guide leads us in an hour-long walk along narrow winding mountain paths. It's only later that I thought about what would have happened in the event of an aftershock (there had already been over 1000 of them in the
10

weeks since the earthquake); but right then as we were walking, all I could think was that I had never seen anything as beautiful as the sun falling on Kashmir's mountains and valleys. I was thinking this when the guide pointed to a spot just feet from me and said a house collapsed there; three of the bodies still hadn't been recovered from the landslide.
It became clear quickly that the house-to-house assessment wasn't feasible. The tents and shelters were too widely spread out - it would take several hours to walk to the furthest one, and the light would soon start failing. So we moved to plan B - there's always a plan B with the SUNGI team - which was to gather a number of villagers from this area and ask them to tell us the names of the people who had lost their homes. A quick glance around was all it took to tell us that everyone had lost everything; not a single house remains standing. So all we needed was the name of every head of household' and the number of people in the household so that we could pass the information on to Save the Children UK. Doctor Sahib made a point of asking for the names of widows who were now the heads of households; one of the problems in these areas is the low visibility of women. All the villagers who were telling us the names to put on the list are men.
The villagers told us we were the first assessment team to come here. The army came right after the earthquake, airlifted the most seriously injured and left 20 tents - there had been no further assistance. Rukshanda and I wandered through the tents, talking to the women. We discovered 10-12 families were sleeping in a single tent, and that the previous night when it snowed many of the tents collapsed. I was wearing several layers of clothing, with two pairs of wool socks and winter boots, and I was freezing - it wasn't yet sunset. I asked one of the women if there was a shortage
of food - it's not a shortage; there's no food, she said.
米
11

Page 12
The next morning, my city dweller's legs were aching from all that mountain-climbing, so its just as well Uzma asked me along as part of the team going to Bagh, one of the areas in which SUNGI and UNICEF are planning an education project. On the way to Bagh we stopped the jeep to pick up Izhar and Javed, two local activists, who kept pointing out things along the journey that we'd otherwise miss. Such as the school which collapsed, though everything around it is still standing. “Every single government school collapsed, Izhar said. Faulty building materials. Izhar was the headmaster of one of the collapsed schools.
A little further on, Izhar asked us to get out of the jeep and look down onto the valley beneath. He pointed to a mountain which didn't exist on October 7. It was caused by landslides from two adjacent mountains, and there are three villages buried beneath it. The previous night I had been re-reading The English Patient just before going to sleep, and, looking down at the landslide I remembered a phrase from its pages: 'tribes suddenly made historical'. A passer-by told us that of the 250 people in the villages, 80 were away at work when the earthquake struck; the rest are still beneath that mountain. Uzma pointed out that there used to be a river flowing through the valley but the new mountain blocked its progress, creating a lake which was daily increasing in depth, and raising the possibility of flooding. And there's also the matter of villages further along the river bed which used to rely on the now-blocked river for their water-supply.
Continuing on, we arrived in Bagh, and drove through narrow streets with collapsed buildings on either side, packed together; in more rural spaces the destruction is more spread out, and in Muzafarrabad the clean-up operation had been going on at a rapid pace for two months, but in Bagh I found myself recalling pictures of Dresden after it was fire-bombed. But the shops which weren't destroyed were open for business.
12

We found the District Education Officer in a tent on a plot of empty land. Here we had a piece of luck - the DEO had lists of all the schools that were in the area and the number of students and teachers in each school; she also had lists of the numbers of students and teachers who died in the earthquake. She told us 90% of the schools had resumed functioning, in non-winterized tents or in open spaces. The parents had instructed the teachers not to keep the children under any roof that could fall in an aftershock. The children themselves were frightened by the stirring of the breeze.
The DEO's comprehensive lists made our lives easy-all we needed to do was take copies of the lists and various phone numbers, and make sure she knew Izhar and Javed would act as liaison between Bagh and the SUNGI office as the project progresses.
On the ride back to Muzaffarabad I asked Uzma if things really were getting better - as a newcomer, all I could see was the work that still remained to be done. Absolutely, she said. “In the beginning people would run after supply trucks, and try to grab all they could. It's not that they're thieves, just that they were desperate. But now you've seen all the trucks filled with tents, standing on the side of the road, without anyone touching them. That's a measure of how things have changed. And above all, people have come to realize their own strength; whatever sorrows they’ve been given, they have borne.
Izhar said that he had personally learnt that “humanity's pain is humanity's pain. People here did not expect the world to come to their aid; they don't see the help that hasn't come, only that which has. It's not surprising that other Muslims came to our aid, he said. The Turks, in particular, have been magnificent. But look at how many non-Muslims also came.’
13

Page 13
That night, sitting in the SUNGI office, I felt the room shake as though someone has angrily slammed a door. Aftershock, Uzma said.
>k
The next day was a day of distribution, in partnership with OXFAM. We were to give 150 villagers the material to construct houses that can survive the winter. In a large, empty field we set up different stations to hand out the 14 components of the 'distribution-packs', the most coveted of which was corrugated iron sheets. Each villager had to carry away 180 kilos worth of material. Impossible to do alone, but each of them brought along a team of 6 or 7 friends and relatives to assist. All but one of the widows on the list sent male representatives.
My first assignment was to help make out the coupons for those whose names were on the lists (drawn up during an earlier assessment) of those whose homes “totally collapsed. Each villager received a coupon after presenting his identity card and signing (or thumb-printing) the original lists. But many identity cards were in the rubble, so SUNGI’s local activists were on hand to verify the identities of those who had no paperwork.
During a break in activity, I walked round to the house near the field where I met a woman who told me her daughter was killed in the earthquake. Voh dub gaee' she said. Literally translated, that comes to 'she was pressed down upon. It's an Urdu phrase I've often heard, but until coming to Kashmir I had only ever heard it as a figurative expression, suggesting a complete loss of spirit.
Later, I was set to stand by the tarpaulin station, making sure the right people get one tarp each. It became clear early in the distribution process that this would take far longer than we imagined. After some consultation with our OXFAM partners who were on hand we decided on Plan B: use the jeeps' headlights as illumination and continue into the night. Some of these
14

villagers had been waiting hours; many of them would have to walk 2.5 kilometres uphill with their housing material (the trucks could not get any further up the mountains) - there was simply no question of telling them to come back tomorrow. We kept on until after 9 pm.
Near the end, I was relieved of my duty and went to stand with two of the OXFAM staff. It was the first time I had a chance to really observe what was going on, and I was struck by how eventempered everyone was, despite the hours of waiting, despite the lengthy process. Was this equanimity or a loss of spirit?
It was impossible to tell, but the atmosphere was much the same the next day when we went for another round of distribution, and the trucks carrying corrugated sheets arrived late. This required a slight adjustment in the distribution procedure, but everything was done quietly and without complaint.
Near the distribution site was the rubble of a school building, with some desks still standing. When I finished filling out coupons, I walked up to them and tried to imagine sitting there at the moment
the earthquake struck.
水
Helping out with distribution took up much of my last three days in Kashmir; there was an odd disjunction between the fairly simple tasks I was doing-filling Out coupons, handing Outtarps - and the enormity of the Overall process of which I was a part. For all the horror stories I heard and saw evidence of there was something extraordinary about being in Kashmir, writing out people's names on coupons that entitled them to receive housing material, and knowing I'd never written anything more important in my life.
15

Page 14
THE SORROW OF WOMEN
Mamang Dai
They are talking about hunger. They are saying there is an unquenchable fire
burning in Our hearts. My love, what shall I do? I am thinking how I may lose you to war, and big issues more important than me.
Life is so hard, like this, Nobody knows why. It is like fire. It is like rainwater, sand, glass. What shall I do, my love, If my reflection disappears?
They are talking about a place Where rice flows on the streets About a place where there is gold in the leaves of trees, They are talking about displacement, When the opium poppy was growing dizzy in the sun happy, in a state of believing
And they are talking about escape, About liberty, men and guns, Ah! The urgency for survival. But what will they do Not knowing the sorrow of women.
16

THE LAST LETTER
Neeman Sobhan
She looks at the envelope as if it were a clandestine letter that she has discovered, written to her husband by another woman. She has come upon it quite by accident, clearing her husband's old desk in the basement before asking him if she could give it away for her neighbour Claire's garage sale next weekend. It was in the bottom drawer under some old travel brochures: the familiar white. envelope.
For the first blurred moment, Rina cannot recognize her own handwriting. The envelope, addressed ten years ago to her father, Professor Nizam Ahmad in her own rounded hand, stares back at her, alien and mocking. It takes a moment for her to realize her hands are shaking. She sits down on the desk. Listen, she tells herself, calm down, it is only an envelope containing a letter that you once wrote to your father, now long dead, and which, for some reason, never got mailed. Surely, these things happened all the time: lives, loves or letters got postponed, mislaid, overtaken by death? She takes a deep breath. It's okay, really. Of course, it will not be easy to swallow this new fact that her father actually never got to read her famous letter, when all these years she has thought otherwise. Imaginel She has spent an entire decade under a delusion
Now, a chill settles over her heart. This is a malicious cosmic joke played on her by fate, a cruel prank in which she feels the inexplicable complicity of her father. How like him to have died abruptly, rudely, while her important letter to him was in the process of being mailed! Showkat must have forgotten about or delayed mailing the letter and by the time he got around to it, it
17

Page 15
was too late; she can see that now. And since then, the letter has been hidden all these years, the evidence buried to spare her. She doesn't blame her husband; she blames her father- for dying so inconveniently, allowing her no time to send him the most beautiful letter she has ever written, her first and last to him.
“It's not fair, Abba. It's so unfair.’ The feeling rather than the words scream and echo inside her. Unemotional and uncommunicative to the end, this then was Abba's goodbye to her: the final turning away, the last rejection. Rina walks numbly around the careful elegance of her suburban home in Potomac, Maryland, touching objects, as if by experiencing their solidity she were establishing her own reality, usurped and sucked a moment ago into the unfinished world within the white envelope in her hand.
She stops at Tanya's door. The lavender papered walls of an appropriately girlish, American pre-teen's room are hung with the regulation posters of music and movie icons. Rina's own contribution to the décor is a stiff doll dressed in a sari, which Tanya has indulged her mother by accommodating on her bookshelf, knowing that the doll represents only a tokgngesture, her mother's feeble attempt to transplant a Bangladeshi environment within an expatriate life.
The more Tanya outgrows Rina's manipulations at retaining some links with a Bengali past, which is only Rina's past, and not that of Tanya who was born American, the more precious that fading world becomes for Rina. But beneath the fluvial, pleasantly undulating pool of her cultural heritage which anchors her everyday life: that safe haven of mother tongue that she insists on as the family's lingua franca; comfort food like daal-bhaat; romantic Bangla and Hindi-Urdu songs in the car; the immediately feminising saris; the reassuring regularity of prayers and mumbling of Aytul-Kursi; and the monochrome sweetness of happy memories, lie also the tangled,
18

choking weeds of unsorted relationships, the terrifying emotional under-tow of the past that can easily unmoor her slippery sense of self if she isn't watchful. Today this threatens to plunge her at the deep end.
Rina walks into her own study and confronts the enlarged, blackand-white framed photograph over her desk. The greying man, good-looking in a thin-lipped way, wearing a suit from the sixties, looks sternly at the camera. For Rina's younger sister Nina, their father had been exactly as this photograph depicts him to be: unresponsive, untouchable, removed. Rina has harboured some illusions, but today, years after his death, she feels him slip back into the photograph. She has lost him again.
Resting her head on the desk she looks up at the Abba who till yesterday had been the father-that-received-the-letter and thus had escaped mere death being immortalized, transformed by his daughter's love. Today he is deaf, dead and gone. And she must dip into her real memories and not her false illusions to bring him back.
Abba is not hard to remember because there is so little of him to remember. She can count on her fingers the exact number of times he smiled at her, recall vividly the occasions on which he lost his temper at her, the few times he praised her and the exact words he used. She safeguards the rare memory of being asked to press his forehead, or was it Nina's memory? Then why does she remember the tautness of his skin, the bristle of his eyebrows? Sometimes when she is with Nina she asks her to corroborate other vague incidents so she can add it to her personal notes.
She has kept this diary assiduously because, since his death, Rina has started to write a story about Abba, to bring him to life in her own way. “What is there to write about?” This is typical Nina, suppressing a yawn during one of her weekend morning phone
19

Page 16
conversations with her, and which is related not to Nina's late hours at her New York office but to her lack of interest in their 'dried out, cold fish’ progenitor. But Rina is undeterred, persistent about fictionalising Abba. In any case, she has for a long time been telling Tanya selective stories about the grandfather Tanya has never known but whom, Rina is determined to believe, she would have learnt to love. It calls for some exaggerations; after all, it is not easy to conjure up the real Abba for storytelling, especially to make him interesting to her easily bored daughter.
With Nina she frequently explores the question of what Abba had really been like. “A bitter, laconic man,” Nina supplies. “Come on, now,” Rina shakes her head, writing aloud: “A man of few words, who disdained the frills and laces of social conversation.' “Whatever. Okay, unsocial and friendless,” Nina volunteers. Rina counters, "I'd say, he had few friends but those he had respected him for his honesty and straightforwardness.” “Yeah! Mention that he also lost a job and countless friends for the very same reason.” Nina had always been Ma's natural confidante whenever their parents fought, which was often.
“You didn't have to be so damned open about your disapproval, you know. 4pa is so hurt. She is after all my only sister. Of course, these things don't matter to you, living in a world of your Own.” Ma's voice would be barely controlled. Abba's tone was icy: “Your 4pa knows very well that I think her son-in-law is a pompous ass who should be kicked from his present position.” “Why cant you at least keep quiet...’
"Listen, Razia, you know I refuse to suffer fools. If I embarrass you, then kindly leave me out of the next family-get-together. I would prefer it and it would solve your problem.” And with that he would walk out leaving Ma seething. Her soft approach was even less effective: “I only worry about you..” “Then kindly refrain from doing so.” She would continue unheeding, "Don't you realize that you
20

make enemies with this unrelenting attitude of yours? One has to learn to be tolerant...” “My dear, I choose not to and that's that.” Often, after a flare-up causing a much-anticipated outing to be cancelled, Rina would think that had she been in Ma's position she would have walked out on a husband like Abba. After her marriage to Showkat, so warm and caring, she often wondered what had kept her mother in her marriage, apart from minor compensations like her being adored by her in-laws. Ma always said that Abba was just not cut out to be either a husband or a father, and this, Ma's acceptance of Abba, was the closest thing to the concept of love she could fathom in her parent's marital life. There was no other evidence; Nina's and her own existence seemed aberrations.
But Rina refused to accept Ma's verdict of Abba being a solitary man as easily and blithely as did Nina who ignored her father. All through her childhood, Rina set about seducing her father's affections. She remembers especially, Abba's evening walks around the garden. The others left him alone but she steeled herself for the violation, approaching him hesitatingly: 'Abba?” Silence, mortifying Maybe he hadn't heard. “Abba, I had something to ask you...' He stopped in his tracks and Rina rushed into her practiced speech. “There is the school debate coming up...' “What's the topic?” She had his attention and now she had to be careful about the subject, since on this depended much. If it was not intellectually stimulating enough, Abba was quite capable of grunting 'rubbish and walking on. "So, which side of the issue are you supporting?” “Well, Abba, (she repeated his name as often as she could) I haven't decided yet. I thought, Abba, that you might help me.”
“Well, I'll give you both sides. You decide what suits you.”
He would clear his throat and an animated lecture would follow This Abba, confronted with an abstract concept would suddenly
21

Page 17
come to life, his voice sonorous, his face animated. The man that
emerged was not her father, but the dazzling reason she would have stayed in a marriage had she been the wife of this acerbic but brilliantly lucid professor.
Often, there was no debate, nor was there a special writing assignment, or the difficult chapter before an exam; since the only appeal to his attention, if not his emotions, was through the intellect, she armed herself to the teeth and lay siege on his mind. Even though she knew that to him she didn't exist individually but generically as a one-person class, she enjoyed her exclusive
moments with Abba. He never looked at her with any real interest, except once, when she opposed his views and spoke passionately, and there had been the flicker of amusement in his eyes. Had Ma already tapped that source? Were their on-going fights their secret and last conjugal resort? These thoughts came to her only 1ncoherently as she learnt to hold her father's interest by carefully provocative intellectual opposition. It was hard work, and he forgot her as soon she was dismissed.
Sometimes Rina had tried to act boyish wondering if Abba missed a son. Or she played the obliging, sweet tempered daughter to the hilt. In fact, she never try harder to woo a man in all her life as she tried the entirety of her growing up as she set out to dazzle her father, getting her stories and poems published in newspapers, becoming the editor of the school magazine, the college debating champion and winning writing competitions and scholarships.
Years later, the one question that Rina often asked herself was whether she had actually ever loved Abba? After his death she wept with a sense of void, though unable to pinpoint where she felt the loss. These bouts left her exhilarated and a little embarrassed too, because she felt it gave the deliciously false impression that she had been wrenched from a particularly close father-daughter relationship, the kind enjoyed by her cousin Mona and her papa. Showkat knew Abba so little that he accepted her weepy moods
22

as natural. Only Rina knew that Abba himself would have been embarrassed and would have asked her to “kindly snap out of it.” In moments like this she doubted she ever loved Abba except as an idea and a challenge, and yet hate and yearning, anger and acceptance, admiration and resentment all loomed large and real. Of course, she knows that hers has been a massive case of unrequited love.
Her most important gift to him, which he took for granted, had been her decision to study his subject, English literature, rather than what she really wanted: Psychology. He had once proclaimed that she had a flair for writing. At that time she had not realized the despair hidden in that admission until years later when she started to read some of her father's fiction and found them surprisingly disappointing. She had expected them to be arid, but not dissatisfying. She realized then that Abba, the clear-eyed realist had known for a long time that his writing was barren, that he might have been a brilliant critic but was a sterile artist. Since then, her awe for her father had turned into protective tenderness. His unfinished novel had been left untouched for years, and she has often tried to imagine the agony of working on something one had lost faith in. Her father's books, precious for their clues to his bitterness, have freed her from blaming herself for his lack of love.
Now, her eyes drift to another framed object on the wall. Abba had once corresponded with the great Bengali poet, Tagore. This letter, famous in the family, used to hang high on his study wall. Abba never mentioned it, but Rina had regarded it as a mystical talisman, denoting the accessibility of greatness. Years later, when she got possession of the letter being the literary one in the family, she finally read it. It consisted of a few kind words by a great man writing to an adolescent acolyte. “Your work shows much talent and promise of a full flowering in the imminent future. My best wishes.” Rina had spoken so much about the letter to Tanya that finally, when it was framed on her wall she was glad that Tanya's
23

Page 18
Bangla was non-existent, and she merely pointed to the signature: “See, that says Rabindranath Tagore. Shantiniketan.”“Cool!” Tanya had obliged. If it weren't an heirloom, she would have thrown it away, and with it, Abba's torment.
But Rina had really started to see her father as human and capable of emotional pain only since she got married. It happened with the one incident after her wedding when he took ill and was hospitalised. Showkat had already left for Boston and Rina was ready to join him. It was the day she went to say goodbye to Abba en route to the airport.
On the way she had speculated about the farewell: would Abba touch her head in blessing; would he pather hand; or say something terse but memorable? When the time came and she found herself alone with him, he did nothing. She just stood by his bed for an awkward five minutes, waiting for him to say something but the room was stony with his silence. Finally, she cleared her throat and said: “So, Abba, I'll be off.” He merely nodded. Stunned by this failed moment, Rina walked off blindly almost running into her mother in the corridor. She ran to the car, bursting into tears of rage. When Ma joined her, Rina noticed her wiping her eyes. She said: “Your Abba was weeping like a child, his face turned to the wall. He wouldn't speak to me.” For a moment, Rina was blank, and then her heart sang out, a surge of triumph hitting the highest notes again and again: 'weeping like a child'
Throughout the flight, she trained her mental camera over the scene of Abba breaking down, from many angles. In Boston, she fought the loneliness of the early days by reassessing her past relationship with her father on the basis of that one glimpse through a crack in Abba's door. This new perspective and the physical distance finally gave her the temerity to write a letter to him. This was the most important letter she had ever written to anyone. It was her first to him and in it she poured her heart.

She had given it to Showkat along with her other letters. Not wanting it to stand out from the rest, she never mentioned its special importance, and there was no urgency for it to be mailed right away. Showkat had put them all in his coat pocket and smiled indulgently at his homesick, letter-scribbling bride. Rina knew that for him, her unguarded sighs during a jovial day of playing house, or her quiet sobbing in the night to which he sometimes awoke after drifting from easy passion to contented sleep, was troubling. She tried to school herself and make amends to this gentle person who would do anything to claim the invisible portion of herself she kept from him.
Once she knew the letter was on the way she remembers sitting back and trying to imagine Abba reading it, moved perhaps, to turning his face away to the wall, refusing to speak to Ma. She imagined Ma's letter: “He keeps reading your letter, wont let me touch it. He seems so changed...” Often Showkat would catch her smiling and misunderstanding would beam back: “I’m happy too.”
Exactly ten days later, they received the shattering news: Abba had died. Everything comes back to Rina now. After the initial shock, the one thought that had kept her going was that she had not delayed sending the letter to Abba. Oh! God, how often she had mentioned this to Showkat: “Thank God I sent the letter. You did mail it? It must have reached him, na?” Poor Showkat. He had held her tightly, in reassurance, she had thought then; his face averted in what she had misinterpreted as transferred grief. Once, when she had calculated aloud the number of days it normally took for US mail to reach Dhaka, she had caught him biting his lips to stop his eyes from brimming, and she had been so touched. Now she understood. Poor man.
Was Main on it too? And now she goes over Ma's vague responses: “Well, yes, the driver did bring some letters to the hospital....darling, I was so exhausted then, running back and forth from home, getting your father's soup... he hated the hospital food.....but I'm sure he got it... “
25

Page 19
Rina lifts her head from her desk and looks at the unsent, unread, stillborn letter into which she had invested so much life: the power to redeem the past and requite her thwarted love. For years, she has used its fragile wings to reach her dead father's cold heart, when all along it had been right here, a broken carrier pigeon dead before its flight. This failed and festering piece of her past needed a decent burial. She gets up with an impulse to tear it up and throw it into the wastebasket, instead she takes it to the kitchen and leaves it along with the other mail for Showkat to discover it: his secret burden of years. Then she makes herself a mug of tea. She isn't angry, she isn't sad, but her husband's kindness, protecting her all these years from the brutal knowledge of the undelivered letter, feels almost like a betrayal.
For a long time she looks out of the window to the backyard where Tanya and Showkat are pottering around, as she strokes the warm mug in her hand. Their laughter drifts to her with the unconscious regularity of the tiny tea-pond lapping the shores of her lips. Then suddenly and quietly, like a shifting of sunlight they seem far away and as faded as an old Rina walking in some vanished garden with Abba, a life-time ago. The father-daughter closeness outside her windows, for the first time, no longer stabs at her. She feels empty, but lightened and free, and gets up briskly to return to her study. She thinks she knows the story she will write.
In this version, the letter would get delivered; the father would not die but recover; the letter, gushing and emotional she remembers now, would never be mentioned; Ma and Abba would visit them; Abba would disdain and rail against everything American; Showkat and he would agree to disagree and argue politely, then fall silent; Tanya would roll her eyes behind her grandfather's back and complain to her aunt on weekends about Nana, and they would all live happily ever after.
On the way, she picks up the envelope from the pile of mail, goes down to the basement and returns it to the bottom drawer under travel brochures to places, unvisited and far away.
26

Poetry
TELLME, YOU WHO KNOW...
(Kannada Original: Tilidavare heli)
Vaidehi Tell me, You who know of poetry, I know nothing of it But I know what rasam is.
Do you think it's mere nothing? It calls for a blend of the principles of water, aroma and essence
a tempered state reached after simmering. . .
Thus. . .
There it was in the corner, a container with rasam, on a seemingly dead and ash-covered coal fire, waiting and waiting. . . Does it matter that it waits?
In the great durbar of meat dishes seasoned with spices that sparkled, of servers who danced as they walked, of laughter and chatter, It waited, since morning, the clear rasam on a seemingly dead coal fire, simmering, still fresh even at night.
You who know all about poetry, tell me, Do you know what rasam is? Forgive me, I don't know any poetry.
Translated by Dr. Ramachandra Sharma.
27

Page 20
TEN LIVES AND AWOMAN
Esther David
If a cat has seven lives, a woman has ten lives. More so if she is a daughter of the East. One knows very little about Iranian culture and cinema. But, some time back we saw an Iranian film titled Ten. It was a Franco-Iranian film by Abbas Kiarostami and gave an insight into the lives of Iranian women. The protagonist was not a crushed poor woman, but an educated independent woman who was capable of taking her own decisions. In the film, the heroine Mania Akbari is shown driving through the streets of Teheran as she narrates the story of her life and that of others. The film was woven around Mania's ten year old son Amin, her sister Mandana, an old woman, a prostitute and a woman she befriends at the mosque.
The narration was divided in ten sequences. Each part expressed a diverse emotion and exposed the condition of women in Iran, interlinked with dialogues between Mania and her son who appears to detest her. This becomes evident when she touches his head to check if he has a fever and he withdraws from her. The ten incidents happen during a week, when Mania goes through a painful divorce.
The method used by Kiarostami was interesting as the camera was continuously focused upon Mania driving the car, as the other nine characters take a seat next to her and speak about their life. Sometimes, the viewer does not see them and only hears their voices, till the camera suddenly swings upon the actor's face and takes the viewer by surprise. The director uses this method with almost each character, except the prostitute. After a most interesting conversation about love and men, you only see her back, never her face.
28

Kiarostami uses some interesting techniques with the use of voices, because when the film begins, one does not see the heroine, but only hears her voice as she talks to her son and the camera remains focused on the child's face, who is angry with his mother. It is a very complex moment as even as she is planning to go through a divorce with her husband that very week, on that particular day, she is also organizing a birthday party for him. In between, she tells her son that she plans to leave his father, as she wants her son to live with her. He refuses and tells his mother that he does not agree with her and does not want to speak to her. As the car reaches his school, he gets off, slams the door and rushes off angrily.
As Mania sighs and keeps on driving, then stops to pick up her sister Mandana. Orthodox in appearance, she is almost always shown with a worried expression and rarely removes her dark glasses. But, once or twice when she does remove them, we see a range of emotions in her eyes. Mandana also appears to be anhoyed when Mania buys a cake for a husband she no longer cares for From her expression, Mandana also conveys that she does not agree with Mania's decision and worries about how their old mother will react to Mania's divorce. After a while, Mania drops her sister at her house and gives a lift to an old woman she meets near the mosque. Here again, the viewer only sees the woman's back and hears her voice. She is dressed in a traditional chador as she tells Mania the story of her life and how she has lost everything including her family and home. Then, at one point she even refuses to get off the car, offering to guard the car when Mania makes one of her many stops. As Mania parks the car near a sidewalk, the old woman shows Mania the last of her jewels she keeps hidden in her chador and requests her to buy the jewel. The viewer is not sure, whether Mania buys the jewel or not.
The most moving scenes in the film are between Mania and a young girl she meets at the mosque. The camera focuses on the younger woman's face. They are both dressed in stylish long dresses,
29

Page 21
heels and scarves which are tied around their heads. Mania is shown wearing rings and an expensive wristwatch. The two women strike an instant friendship and talk about their lives. The younger woman tells Mania that her fiancé had recently broken their engagement and in anguish she had tonsured her head. With strong feelings of empathy and sisterhood, Mania touches her head tenderly.
In between Kiarostami, breaks these sequences by showing confrontations between Mania and her son. Through these dialogues it becomes clear that it is the end of the week and Mania has gone through the divorce. She has lost custody of her son and can see him only for a few hours after school. Mania parks her car near the school, where her husband drops the child to meet his mother and Mania asks him, if she can keep the child a little longer than the usual time. Once in a while, her husband leaves Amin with her, but he is rarely nice, to his mother, even when she pleads for a kiss or buys his favourite cakes. He also refuses to go to her house, instead prefers to be dropped at his grandmother's place.
At the end of the film, Mania remains a mystery, as the viewer never, knows, what she does for a living, or if there is another man in her life? The only indication she gives of being a working woman is when she tells the old woman that she is a very busy person. And, as she drives away, you are left wondering, who is Mania ?
3)

SHAHRAZAD'S GOLDEN LEOPARD
Muneeza Shansie
“Shahrazad,” her mother cried impatiently. “Hurry up.” Shahrazad's mother stood over her in the cold sunless dressing room. Shahrazad longed to please her mother. She looked more beautiful than ever at that early hour with her wavy black hair falling down her pale neck.
“I’ll only be a minute.” Shahrazad said. Shahrazad struggled with her cardigan. She had finally learnt to put it on, without the help of Kishwari Bua, her matronly maidservant. She wanted to impress her mother with her achievement. Her mother had been brought up by countless slave women in preindependence India, until she moved to Pakistan at Partition; she could see absolutely no pointin Shahrazad's small act of independence.
“You’ll be late for school' she cried. Shahrazad and her brother, Shah Rukh, were the first few Pakistani Children to be accepted at Miss Forrestor's Schoolin Karachi; it was situated in the airy, colonial flat below theirs, on Clifton Road.
“The bell won't ring until nine,” said Shahrazad.
She knew it took only a minute to go down. “You should be there at a quarter to nine,” said her mother. “Otherwise what will Mrs. Forrestor think? That you come from just another slipshod Pakistani home?'
She seized Shahrazad and tried to yank her imported cardigan on, but it was too tight. Shahrazad who had always been round and tubby, had put on more weight. Shahrazad's mother raged and stormed; Kishwari Bua muttered to herself and hunted for another, more suitable cardigan.
Published in A Dragonfly. In The Sun: An Anthology of Pakistani Writing in English Edited by Muneeza Shamsie, Published by Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1997
31

Page 22
Shahrazad edged closer to the large wooden cupboard, with crystal knobs, as her mother unlocked it. Her mother kept her French chiffon saree there, but right on the top shelf, sat Shahrazad's Leopard. Her Uncle Bunny had won it at a raffle in England. He had given it to Shahrazad on her birthday. But she wasn't allowed to play with it yet. Her mother said that she was only seven and much too young. Shahrazad could hardly wait to grow up and carry the Leopard under her arm. Sometimes her mother would allow her to climb up on a stool and stroke the Leopard's lovely golden fur; or stare into its eyes, which shone in the dark, like a real Leopard's. At moments Shahrazad thought she loved it more than anything in the world, but she was immediately ashamed of her wickedness. One must love Mummy, Daddy and Shah Rukh first, even if Shah Rukh, her little brother, had ripped her “Little Lulu' comics and beheaded her doll.
“Shahrazad was punished at school yesterday because she spoke in Urdu to Batool.” Shah Rukh said.
“You promised not to tell!” Shahrazad spun round. “You promised!”
Shah Rukh's eyes were large and innocent eyes; he continued combing his hair in the mirror, absorbed in his own reflection.
“Why did you speak UrduP” screeched Shahrazad's mother. "Don't you know you're at an English school? That we got you admission with difficulty? You're such a stupid, stupid girl. As for Batool. I don't know why you can't have any other friends but her. She comes from a second rate family with a second rate background. So nouveau riche."
She pulled an appropriate cardigan roughly over her ungainly daughter. “Your brother is two years younger than you,” she said. “But he's always read first.” She brushed Shahrazad away and hugged her sturdy son. “Oh! You are the Light of My Eyes,” she said. She spoke in Urdu, the language she knew best. “And you are the most precious gift that God could have ever bestowed upon me.”
Shahrazad tried to stop herself from trembling. She walked quickly down the stairs accompanied by Shah Rukh. A manservant carried their satchels and thermos.
32

“Oh here's good old Fatty-Ma” Malcolm Carter sneered at Shahrazad in the dusty school compound, which was shaded by two palm trees and a neem. Malcolm was a big red faced boy, in Shahrazad's class. He was one of the few English children at the school whose parents knew hers. His father was a director in Read Chemicals where Shahrazad's father worked. That was why Shahrazad's mother had insisted on inviting him to her birthday party; and he had discovered that Shahrazad's middle name was Fatima. Considering her shape and size, he thought that enormously funny.
“Fatty-Ma. Fatty-Ma?” Malcolm led Shah Rukh and a chorus of children.
Shahrazad stumbled over a stone and almost fell, but her servant caught her and guided her to the porch. There were no classroom at Mrs. Forrestor's School. All the lessons were held in the long verandah. The pupils were grouped around six polished tables of various sizes, supervised by the galleon-like Mrs. Forrestor and her thin, redhead sister, Miss Jones. Their private drawing room lay beyond the curtain, flapping in the open doorway.
Shahrazad waved to lively, smiling Batool her best friend in class and chatted with her until the bell ran. They were careful to talk only in English, although once or twice Shahrazad almost slipped into Urdu by mistake, as she had the day before.
The bell rang Children gathered for Assembly and then Miss Jones played the piano with gusto. She sang “God Save The Queen' and “Onward Christian Soldiers' along with the children in her high, warbling voice. Shahrazad loved singing hymns and was enchanted by the photographs of the lovely new Queen of England, Elizabeth II and her sister, Princess Margaret which gazed at her from the wall. She was equally overwhelmed by the print of the Great Queen Victoria, receiving her Indian subjects.
“Shahrazad,” Mrs. Forrestor suddenly bore down on Shahrazad and placed a freckled hand on her brown arm. “I'd like you to move your books to the small table where Jenny and Peter sit.”
Shahrazad's large mouth twitched nervously.
33

Page 23
She wondered why - and what she had done wrong. Jenny, a sprightly girl, whom she greatly admired, was a whole year older than her. So was Peter, a pallid Dutch boy.
“I’ve decided to put you in a more advanced class,” Mrs. Forrestor's voice floated over her. “Your grasp of reading and arithmetic is far ahead of children your own age.”
Shahrazad had been so sure that Mrs. Forrestor wanted to punish her that it took a little time to grasp that she was being given a double promotion! She was now in the smallest and senior most class: Jenny gave her a friendly smile of welcome and Peter helped her arrange her books.
Shahrazad could hardly wait to tell her parents. She had forgotten that Uncle Bunny and his wife, Aunty S.B. (short for Shagufta Begum) were coming for lunch, because they were moving house.
“My God,” Uncle Bunny cried out involuntarily in English, the moment he saw her "She's put on more weight!”
Crestfallen, Shahrazad performed a dutiful “ad’ab” to her imposing uncle in the study, uncertain whether it was The Correct Thing to hang around or move away; it was not as if Uncle Bunny was any ordinary Uncle. He was a very important man. Uncle Bunny was The Secretary of Industries. He had shaken hands with everybody including The Quaid-e-Azam, Lord Mountbatten and The Queen of England. His stately, sophisticated wife Aunty S.B. had been at a finishing school in Switzerland. They had a son of 10, who was being brought up by his Anglicized grandparents in Surrey.
“Really Mehru.” Aunty S.B. turned to Shahrazad's mother. Her long manicured hands treated chappatties and poories as Europeans do bread, and she ate kebabs and curry delicately with a fork. “You must do something about Shahrazad's weight. It's beyond a joke.”
Shahrazad's mother, Mehru turned a pasty white. She took S.B.'s criticism, very personally. Bunny had been betrothed to Mehru originally, when he joined that elite corps, the Indian Civil Service and left for Oxford in 1937. But he married S.B. whom he had met at a Commem. Ball. While Mehru had to settle for Jo, his spineless brother.
34

“Shahrazad,” her mother snapped, her nerves at screaming pitch. "Take those filthy ink stains off your hands, brush your hair and then come back to the dining table.”
Throughout lunch, Shahrazad kept trying to tell everyone about her double promotion; each time she opened her mouth, the grownups started talking about something else. She decided to enjoy the meal, particularly since Ali Jan the cook had prepared all kinds of specialties for Uncle Bunny.
“Now look,” Uncle Bunny twitched a bushy eyebrow at her. “Just look at her.”
He observed Shahrazad with revulsion as she reached for a sizzling hot, fluffy and fried poori. He and S.B. had come to the sad conclusion that there was something drastically wrong with Shahrazad. She was not simply flabby and fat and had protruding teeth, held together by braces, but she twitched and rolled her eyes and didn't seem to understand a word said to her.
“Don’t touch that poori, Shahrazad's mother caught her by the wrist. “It is very, very fattening”
If the grownups could eat poories, why couldn't she? Shahrazad wanted to cry.
“Mehru, “Shahrazad's small, quiet father suddenly spoke from the other end of the table. “It is not fair to put tempting things in front of the child and then not expect her to eat them.”
His wife's need to impress Bunny and S.B. enraged him; he was compelled to tolerate them due to the ties of blood.
"See,” Shahrazad's mother turned to Bunny. “See. How your brother undermines my authority all the time.”
Silence fell. Shahrazad's father concentrated on his food. Shah Rukh decided he wasn't hungry and left the table. "In England no child is ever allowed to leave the table without permission,” said Aunty S.B.
Shah Rukh was promptly summoned back. He was ordered to eat the poories which he didn't want; while Shahrazad was compelled to deny herself.
35

Page 24
That evening Uncle Bunny and Aunty S.B. came back to have dinner with Shahrazad's parents. Just before bedtime, Shahrazad settled down to play with the large doll's house; it stood in the verandah, which had been partitioned, to create a small study at the far end. She could hear the grown ups talking very clearly, but was much too absorbed in her games to listen. Suddenly she heard her name. She pricked up her ears.
“Jo,” said Uncle Bunny. “I am not saying this to hurt you. But only in your interest and the child's. She's not just ungainly, but she doesn't seem quite normal.”
“What?' snapped Shahrazad's father. He was always so soft spoken that Shahrazad was surprised at his harsh tone.
“You must consider the possibility that she's mentally -” “Rubbish’ “Retarded.’ "She comes top of her class, damn you Bunny.” Her father's voice reverberated with hate. “She comes first.”
Her father knew Shahrazad realized with a shock. Her father knew she was clever.
“She's always buried in her books,” said Shahrazad's mother. “That's her problem. She has no concept of being obedient, or looking nice. She only eats fried foods and sweets. She does no exercise. The only children she wants to play with are riffraff. I really think she should be sent to a boarding school. Where the nuns can sort her out. Because I certainly can't. It is too much for me and my nerves.”
"Then I suggest Mehru that you try and control your fragile nerves,” said Shahrazad's father. “I am not sending Shahrazad away anywhere.”
Shahrazad never knew how long she sat there, paralyzed, before she gathered herself up, with tears streaming down her face; she hid herself in the dressing room, so that no one would hear her sobs. And then, as her eyes adjusted to the dark, she noticed through a wet blurr, that the door to her mother's special cupboard was ajar. She could see the leopard's shining eyes calling out to her. How beautiful the leopard was! She felt her way around until she found a
36

stool; she moved it to the cupboard so that she could stand up on it. The leopard seemed to come alive, when she put her hand on his head. She imagined herself as a pretty blue eyed and blonde princess, who lived in a crystal castle, high up on a snow clad mountain, guarded by her leopard. He could read her thoughts. He understood her every word. He had the power to take away her pain.
“Shahrazad Bibi Shahrazad Bibi' She heard Kishwari Bua call. The maid servant's voice was tinged with panic. “Shahrazad Bibi, where are you?”
Shahrazad clambered down, taking care not to fall. She rushed into the bathroom, where she sat down on the potty. She knew that Kishwari Bua would find her there, the moment she turned on the light. Of course it meant a scolding and a long, unnecessary interrogation to ascertain whether she had constipation, diarrhoea or wind.
The following day, Shahrazad followed her mother into the dressing room. With great anticipation, she watched her take out her key, but at that point Maulvi Sahib arrived, as he did three times a week, to give lessons in Urdu and the Quran. Both Shah Rukh and Shahrazad sat with him in the verandah. He told them fearful tales about the terrors of hell, while he adjusted his shawl and spat phlegm into his handkerchief. He then tested them on their prayers and made them read passages from the Quran, twisting their ears hard, if either stumbled or made a mistake; and not even Shah Rukh dared protest. When Maulvi Sahib had finished with Shah Rukh's lessons, he shaped a reed pen for Shahrazad and rubbed wet paste on the wooden taehti for her to write on. Shahrazad fashioned the thick and thin letters of the Urdu alphabet with immense pleasure and concentration. Maulvi Sahib's eye fell on her copy of “The Arabian Nights”.
“Nausobilah,” said Maulvi Sahib, flicking rapidly through the illustrations. It was sinful to own such books, he said. Hadn't God declared the drawing the human form was forbidden – haram?
Shahrazad was so distressed by this remark, that she insisted on telling her mother, before her afternoon nap.
“What absolute rubbish,' said Shahrazad's mother.
37

Page 25
She had no choice but to tolerate maulvi Sahib: he was the best Urdu and Quranic teacher she could find for her children.
"Kishwari Bua agreed with him.” Shahrazad said. "Tell Kishwari not to be so stupid.” “She says it's written in the Quran.” “Shahrazad!” her mother was really angry now. Shahrazad couldn't sleep that afternoon. She slipped quietly off her bed; she went to the wooden cabinet where she kept her books neatly stacked. She examined each, one by one "Winnie the Pooh" "King Arthur and The Knights of The Round Table', 'Grimmi Fairy Tales" - and many others. Surely God didn't think they were all harame She wondered what Maulvi Sahib would have said about 'Twas The Night Before Christmas? It was the first pop-up book she'd ever seen; it seemed almost like magic to her, the way all its pictures unfolded and stood up, when she turned the page. She pulled the tabs which made Santa Claus go up and down the snow clad chimney; she could even move his sledge and reindeer right across the sky from one end of the page to the other.
Shafts of afternoon sunlight seeped through the wooden shutters and spread across the patterned floor tiles. Shahrazad didn't realize that Shah Rukh had woken up. His pudgy fingers suddenly clamped themselves onto the book and squashed the Christmas Tree. “Now look what you've done!” Shahrazad cried. She tried anxiously to get the Christmas tree to stand up again, but it kept falling on its side. Shah Rukh tried to push her away from the book. She clutched it to her heart. He embedded his fingers in her hair. “Ow!” Shahrazad yelped. “Let go!” “Give me the book, he said. “No,' said Shahrazad. “It’s mine.' “I’ll pull harder. Then all your hair will fall out,” he said. Shahrazad gave her brother a violent shove. He shot across the floor and crashed into the doll's house, taking a few strands of Shahrazad's hair with him.
“Mama! Mama!' He howled at the top of his voice. “Shahrazad hit me.'

Kishwari Bua who was snoring on the bedroom rug, woke up with a start. Shah Rukh ran out of the room, tears streaming down his face. Shahrazad fell into Kishwari Bua's comforting arms.
“Mama! Mama! I hurt my head,” Shah Rukh told his mother. “Shahrazad pushed me against the cupboard and pulled my hair out. And Kishwari Bua did nothing to stopher. Look.’ He opened his fist to display a few strands. "Just because I wanted to look at her pop-up book. He started howling again.
“Well don't cry little one. I'll get another book for you.” His mother draped a cotton Saree around her slender figure and admired herself in the mirror. She then put on some bright red lipstick and sucked in her lips to ensure an even gloss. “Now go and get dressed for Malcolm Carter's birthday party.”
A short while later, she found Shahrazad slumped in the corner with her book. “What? Still sitting there?” she said. “Is that how you're going to go to Malcolm's party?”
Shahrazad could hear the clatter of the bucket and the splash of water coming from the bathroom, while Kishwari Bua was telling Shah Rukh in loud angry tones to keep still. He emerged a short while later, dressed in his new sailor suit. He smelt of baby soap and talcum powder.
“Oh don't you look lovely, his mother gave him a dazzling smile. “Unlike your sister, “ she glared at Shahrazad. “Who likes to wander around looking like a Sweeper woman.”
“I don’t want to go,” mumbled Shahrazad.
“What?’
“I don't want to go.”
“Why ever not?'
“I hate Malcolm.'
“Malcolm is a very nice boy,” said Shahrazad's mother. “His parents are very important people. His mother recommended you to Mrs. Forrestor's school. His father is taking over as the new Chairman. Your father's promotion depends on him.”
“Please Mamal” came Shahrazad's whining voice. “Can't I stay at home today? Just this once.”
39

Page 26
“Shahrazad doesn't want to go to the party because nobody likes her.” gloated Shah Rukh. “They call her Fatty-Ma.”
“Well they’re quite right. She is fat.” Shahrazad ran into the bathroom. She was determined not to cry again. She would show she didn't care. And she knew she was better than Malcolm and Shah Rukh: she got higher marks in class.
“Shahrazad,” her mother called out after her. “Why have you taken that book? You'll spoil it in the bathroom. Give it to Shah Rukh.”
“But he'll tear it’ "Don't be so selfish,” reproved her mother. “You had no right to hit your little brother and pull his hair out, because he wanted to look at it. Someone should pull your hair so that you would know how painful it is,” she added with venom.
“I didn't pull his hair.” Shahrazad cried out. “He pulled mine.” “Now you've become a liar as well. How many times must I tell you that lying is a very low despicable habit, that only the servant's children pick up?'
Shahrazad wore a yellow satin dress with frills and bows and a pair of white shoes and white socks. At that hour of the day it was hot, even though it was November. Shahrazad longed for her comfortable cotton dress.
“Now behave yourself at the party,’ her mother said. “Here is Malcolm's present. Don't forget to wish him Happy Birthday and say How Do You Do nicely to his mother.”
Shahrazad wondered what was in the enormous package for Malcolm. Malcolm ruined all his toys. She had told her mother so, over and over again, yet they always gave Malcolm such nice presents. Better than anything she had ever received.
Except for her Leopard. Malcolm was always pushing her, spoiling her clothes (she always had to wear her best to visit him) but his ayah never said a word; while his huge, blonde mother, with her large hats and long white gloves, liked to dismiss his unruliness with the words "Boys will be boys.” Except once, when Malcolm had twisted Shahrazad's
40

arm around herback, thrown her down and kicked her in the stomach. Mrs. Carter had caught him and sent him up to bed. “Never, neverlet me catch you behaving like that,” she reprimanded him. “And don't ever hit a girl in the stomach.” But Shahrazad's mother had not been annoyed with Malcolm at all. “I am sure Malcolm meant no harm,” she said to Mrs. Carter with her sweetest smile. “He is such a nice boy. Shahrazad must have provoked him." Of course Shahrazad had protested. But her mother pinched her and scolded her and made her apologize to Mrs. Carter AND Malcolm. Mrs. Carter had looked down at Shahrazad's nervous mother from her great height. “Well I do hope Mehru, that Shahrazad will learn a little discipline from Mrs. Forrestors. And some good manners.”
When they got home, Shahrazad had been left behind with Kishwari Bua for being a naughty girl and a liar. Shah Rukh had been taken out for a drive. The mere memory brought tears to Shahrazad's eyes.
How she hated Malcolm's parties. “Hello Malcolm,”Shahrazad alighted sedately from the car. Malcolm lived in a rambling semi-detached house in Clifton, next to Jenny Mathieson, except that Malcolm's house was much bigger and had a lovely garden with huge trees and masses of winter flowers.
“Oh it's good old Fatty-Ma,” said Malcolm. He was dressed in a cowboy suit and he slouched in imitation of the cowboy heroes in comics. Suddenly he whirled around, whisked his gun out of the holster and said "Pow you're dead Fatty-Ma.”
Shahrazad looked nervously around. She wasn't quite sure whether to smile or not. Malcolm and Shah Rukh, his shadow, were both grinning at her. She longed to crawl back into the car and go home.
“Happy Birthday Malcolm,” she said. She gave him the present. "It looks big enough,” he said. Mary, his Christian ayah, carried the present to the lawn. Surrounded by curious children, Malcolm tore off the blue and gold wrapping paper. He wrenched open the lid of the cardboardbox. He
41

Page 27
pulled out the tissue. Some of the children gasped. Shahrazad was aghast. There in Malcolm's large, rough hands was a beautiful leopard with dark spots and shining eyes. Her Leopard.
“It's a cissy toy,' snorted Malcolm and tossed him aside. Malcolm was more interested in the bows and arrows that Jenny had given.
Shahrazad felt sick. “That a lovely present,” said Jenny. She picked the leopard up and gave it politely to Malcolm's ayah to take upstairs with the other toys, “Malcolm should have said thank you,” Jenny added.
“Doesn't matter mumbled Shahrazad. She thought her heart would surely break. She would never carry her Leopard under her arm now. She could never show him off to her friends. She could never talk to him again. You can't have him! She wanted to cry. You can't have him! He's minel Uncle Bunny gave him to me!
Shahrazad was so miserable that she didn't even want to watch the magic show or sing Happy Birthday. She hardly noticed the cake, or the streamers, balloons and confetti. “My dear I must congratulate you on your double promotion,” Malcolm's mother said in her loud booming voice. “Mrs. Forrestor told me all about it.” Mrs. Carter was a personal friend of Mrs. Forrestor. That was why Mr. Carter had given permission for the school to remain in a building bought by Read Chemicals. “Your parents must be very proud indeed,” Mrs. Carter said. Shahrazad turned puce, to find herself the centre of attraction. She blinked and twitched, even more than usual.
“Have you seen the absolutely gorgeous leopard that someone's given Malcolm,” she overheard a tall English lady say to another. "I wish I could swipe it.”
Even the grown up wanted her leopard. Malcolm decided to play Cowboys and Indians, after tea. Everyone wanted to be on Malcolm's side, the winning side, the Cowboys. So Malcolm made Shahrazad the Indian Chief. He delegated Jenny and a few children he didn't like to her side. Within
42

five minutes, he declared that all the Indians had been killed, so they couldn't play any more.
“Oh he really is stupid,” said Jenny. Jenny was lucky because her mother took her home, soon afterwards. Shahrazad sat out alone, for the rest of the party.
“Why weren't you playing with the other children?' her father asked, when he came to fetch her.
“Oh she's always like that,” her mother said. “She never makes an effort.'
“Malcolm's got my Leopard.” Shahrazad mumbled. “Leopard? What Leopard' her father asked. “The one Uncle Bunny got from England.” “I don't remember it.' “How did Malcolm get it?” “Mama gave him.” Shahrazad accused. “She wouldn't let me play with him. She said I would have made him dirty; but I wouldn't have.'
"She is such a stupid child,” her mother said. “She wants everything to belong to her. I had to give Malcolm a nice present, but she doesn't understand the meaning of giving”
Shahrazad gazed miserably out of the car window. A vast expanse of grey, low lying sand, interspersed with crystalline sea salt, lay between Clifton and her home in Clifton Road.
“She's only a child,” said her father, parking the car. “You can't expect her to understand these things. Never mind Shahrazad. You can play with it when you go to Malcolm's.”
“I hate going to Malcolm's. Besides he was my Leopard.” “It was mine too,” said Shah Rukh. “No he wasn't.' “Now don't quarrel,” said their father. “When Uncle Bunny goes to England again, I'll ask him to get you both a leopard.”
Shahrazad knew that he was lying Shahrazad had a terrible dream that night. She searched and searched for her Leopard but couldn't find him anywhere. And then, deep in the jungle, she met Malcolm mocking her, sneering at her. He
43

Page 28
set the leopard on her. She ran and ran and ran, but couldn't run fast enough. She knew he was going to eat her up, while Shah Rukh stood by and watched, chanting “Fatty-Ma Fatty-Ma.” She woke up, shaking with fright. Suddenly, Shahrazad's bedroom lights blazed. “Shahrazad,” her father's voice penetrated through her. She was astonished to see her parents in their evening clothes, standing over her. “I’ve just met Joyce Carter at dinner,” her father said. “She tells me you've received a double promotion.”
“Yes,’ Shahrazad raised a protective arm over her eyes and tried to adjust to the brightness.
Shah Rukh sat up and blinked. “Why didn't you tell us?” her father said. “You can't imagine how stupid I felt,” her mother's voice quivered. “There was Joyce Carter congratulating me. And I didn't even know why.”
Shahrazad looked vacantly at her parents. “It's all very well for you to be intelligent at school, but you ought to learn to be intelligent at home,” her mother pursed her lips. “Otherwise people will think there's something wrong with you.”
Shahrazad sank into her bedclothes. “Well, now that you've got a double promotion, I think you deserve a present don't you?” said her father jovially.
Shahrazad didn't answer. Her parents presented her with a big, illustrated encyclopedia the next day, but she hardly looked at it. Instead she invited stories about the Leopard in her day dreams and held long, imaginary conversations with him. Sometimes, she visualized herself with lots of little leopard cubs, which she gave to her friends. Of course there were many moments when she almost told Batool, or Jenny or Peter about the leopard, but somehow she didn't. They wouldn't really understand, though they lent her books, shared her sandwiches and agreed that Malcolm was horrible. That was why Batool and Peter had refused his invitation and Jenny went there only rarely although they were neighbours.

One night, Shahrazad dreamt that it was her birthday. All the children brought her lovely presents and Malcolm returned her leopard to her. She held him tightly. “My Leopard is back,” she wanted to cry, but couldn't. “Wake up Shahrazad Bibi,” she heard Kishwari Bua call. “Wake up.” Daylight streamed into Shahrazad's bedroom. She was seized with sudden panic. Where had her leopard gone? Then she noticed that she was clinging to her pillow.
“Shahrazad Bibi, Kishwari Bua scolded her. “Don’t waste time. You must change quickly.”
“But it's Saturday.” “Saturday, Sunday, what difference does it make?' muttered the old woman. “You still have to get up.”
“Where are we going this morning?” “How should I know?' grumbled Kishwari. “Ionly do as I'm told. You have to wear this frock.’
Shahrazad regarded the frock with suspicion. It was one of her best frocks, not a party dress, but the sort of dress that she wore when there were important visitors. Or when she had to visit Malcolm. Malcolm She suddenly brightened. At least she would see her Leopard again. She could hardly contain her excitement or eagerness. She hoped Malcolm was looking after him properly. Yes, there he was sitting safely on top of a high shelf in Malcolm's nursery. He was even more magnificent than she remembered him to be. She longed to touch him, but could not reach up so high, nor did she dare ask. "Don't you ever play with him?” she asked Malcolm in wonder.
Malcolm snorted. “That? Only a girl would play with that, Fatty-Ma.” Malcolm's mother had invited several other children, over that morning for a Scavenger Hunt. Shahrazad remained in Malcolm's room, on the pretext of a headache. She hardly noticed the noise and yelps of the other children, charging in and out of the house and the garden. She talked to her Leopard in a special, silent language. How she loved him! For the first time, she was reluctant to leave Malcolm's. She didn't even mind being called Fatty-Ma and would happily have played Cowboys and Indians and been killed off as the Indian Chief.
45

Page 29
A few days later, Shahrazad caught flu and was mortified that she couldn't accompany her mother and Shah Rukh to the Christmas Bazaar that Mrs. Carter was holding in her garden.
We played with the Leopard today.” Shah Rukh informed her when he came back. “We had great fun.”
Shahrazad was sick with envy. “What did you do?” she asked him. “We played shiéanis with him,” said Shah Rukh. “We had a lovely time.”
Shahrazad could hardly wait to visit Malcolm again. But no one invited her there, until one morning, when her parents took her along, to congratulate Mr. Carter for taking over as the new Chairman. Shahrazad could hardly bear the suspense while she and Shah Rukh had to converse with Mrs. Carter. Shahrazad almost feared that she would have to leave, without as much as a peek into Malcolm's room. She didn't know how long it was, before Mrs. Carter finally sent for Malcolm and asked him to take the children upstairs. Shahrazad veered automatically into the nursery. But the Leopard wasn't there. Panic seized her. She must find him. She must. Where was he?
Malcolm was standing in the doorway, hands on his hips, grinning V
“I climbed a chair and took it down,” he said arrogantly. “We wanted to play shiéar.”
“Where have you put him?” “There,” he pointed to a cupboard, crammed with toys. “Look for yourself.”
Shahrazad lurched towards the cupboard. With frantic hands, she pushed away the pile of toy cars, aeroplanes, space ships, guns and headless robots. Underneath it all, there lay her Leopard, ruined. His tail was broken, his luminous eyes had been pulled out. There was a slit down the centre of his stomach; straw and stuffing were hanging out. Her Leopard had been murdered Tears welled up in her eyes. “What have you done?’ she turned on Malcolm in absolute fury. “What have you done?”

He stood there, quite calmly in the same mocking posture. “We hunted, shot and were about to skin him, when we got bored,” he said.
“Oh, I hate you,” she screamed. She leapt towards him, seized his hair, scratched him and kicked him as hard as she could. Shah Rukh fell on top of her and began to pummel her. Malcolm was much stronger than her, anyway. He soon freed himself. He kicked her viciously in the stomach and pushed her roughly away from him. She crashed into the pile of toys she had thrown out of the cupboards. For a moment she was completely stunned. She caught a glimpse of her brother chanting "Fatty-Ma, Fatty-Ma.” She saw Malcolm coming towards her, menacing and evil. Her hands fell on some hard objects around her. With all her strength, she hurled them at him, one after another. She wanted to punish Malcolm, to punish him for what he had done. “I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!' she shouted hysterically Malcolm was coming nearer and nearer. As her last defence, she threw the electric engine at his face. Malcolm gave a howl of pain. There was blood everywhere. all at once everybody, including Shah Rukh, was screaming. Someone - a grown up seized her arms and dragged her away. She struggled, crying out for help. But no one came to her at all. Instead, everybody surrounded Malcolm and kept asking him questions and saying how horrible Shahrazad was. Then her mother charged in and slapped her face, again and again. People kept rushing in and Out. Malcolm was taken to hospital. His mother was crying
“Everyone says you are a murderer,” said Shah Rukh. Shahrazad had permanently blinded Malcolm in one eye.
47

Page 30
Fiction
RANIMLATA
Niaz Zaman
She was the younger sister of the most beautiful actress of the Kolkata screen in the forties, he was the younger brother of a petty hill chieftain and, as fate would have it, they fell in love at first sight. But, as fate would have it, by the time they met, she was already married to the petty hill chieftain who had long hankered after the beautiful actress, but, not getting her " she was happily married to a small businessman" had settled for her younger sister, quite as beautiful and a BA from Lady Brabourne College as well. The younger brother of the hill chieftain was unmarried and, in the tradition of romantic myths and legends, remained a bachelor till he died fifty years after he fell in love.
Of course, all this I learned later, in bits and pieces, putting together the little scraps like the parts of a jigsaw puzzle of which there was no picture guide so that I didn't quite know how the picture would turn out.
I first met her because she was the mother of a classmate who came from a hill community and I was doing a thesis on the role of women in the hill community. When I was doing my thesis, the home of the petty chieftain “ the son of the petty chieftain who had married the younger sister of the actress and who had died in mysterious circumstances after fathering four daughters" Rajeshwari was the youngest daughter" and a son" was still across the river. We crossed the river in a small rowboat which deposited us in thirty minutes before the gate of the palace, guarded by lions in the tradition of the Far East.
The Ranimata was fifty years old at the time and still very beautiful, though her features seemed to have just slightly loosened as they do with age. Strangely enough, she didn't have the oriental eyes of the hill tribes that my friend had. My friend explained that
48
 

her mother did not belong to the hill tribe - she was a plainswoman from Kolkata, a Hindu, rather than a Buddhist like the tribe. That was when my friend told me how her father had admired the Bengali actress from Kolkata. He had seen all the movies that the actress had made. Once during a visit to Kolkata “ still spelled Calcutta in those days “he had expressed his desire to meet the actress in person. A. small reception had been arranged. The actress came along with her younger sister, who everyone said looked very like her famous elder sister. Within a week my friend's father had married the actress's younger sister. Seven years later her father was dead. Her brother “ one year old at the time “ became chief.
“Weren't there any problems?' I asked. My friend shrugged her shoulders. “I don't know. My mother did the ruling, I suppose, aided by my uncle, my father's brother.” Used to the fratricidal struggles of the Mughals and the palace intrigues where uncles manipulated their young nephews to marry their daughters, I was surprised that the year-old boy had been allowed to live till, seventeen years later, at the age of eighteen, he had assumed the kingship. For six years, the uncle had continued to work as Chief Minister, till, at the age of twentyfive, the King had retired him and appointed another Chief Minister.
“And what does your uncle do?” “He does not keep well these days. He stays in a nursing home.” She named a hill resort in India.
For a week my friend and I visited the women in their huts - many of them built on stilts, to keep away the wild animals, my friend explained. I saw the small, primitive hand-held looms on which the tribal women wove remarkably fine lengths of cloth. “Every girl must learn to weave,” Rajeshwari explained, showing me the sampler - with rows of different motifs. “Even I have woven a lungi for myself. We wear these woven lungis, you know, while the Muslim women of Chittagong wear machine-made, printed lungis. Mother has, of course, never worn a lungi. She always wears saris, but she has had several shawls made, in traditional colours and patterns as well as in untraditional colours.
49

Page 31
She has also brought silk yarn for special shawls. She always keeps these special shawls handy for giving as gifts. When Ayub Khan visited with his daughter, Mother presented a dark green shawl to the daughter, who was married to the ruler of Swat. Swat is famous for emeralds, and Ayub Khan's daughter often wore emeralds, so Mother chose that dark green for her.”
The week whizzed by with me writing down notes, taking pictures with my small Ilford. Soon it was time to say goodbye. While taking my leave, partly as a mere formality, I told Rajeshwari's mother that if she ever came to Dhaka my parents would love to meet her - I wasn't married at the time and was still staying with my parents. My invitation was just a form of politeness. With two daughters married in Dhaka, she had no dearth of places to stay and perhaps no time to visit people she didn't know.
Time passed. I got married. Rajeshwari finished her Honours and left to study abroad. There she met a small chieftain from an Indian state and married him. But the small chieftain soon found that he had no chiefdom left, so Rajeshwari and he settled abroad and turned to making documentaries on little-known tribes of the East.
And then, one day, Rajeshwari's mother was suddenly in the limelight. There were few women in the public arena, and when the new president looked around for mature" meaning above a certain age “educated women, he was given a list of twelve women who met his requirements. He had once visited the Raja, Rajeshwari's brother, and been charmed by the hospitality and bearing of the Raja's family, particularly the dignity and elegance of the Ranimata. He offered the post of State Minister for Tribal Affairs in a newly created ministry to the Ranimata. She graciously accepted.
Dhaka was still a quiet city then, and I would meet the Ranimata about twice a year. Despite the passage of time, she hadn't forgotten me and, after meeting me a couple of times at receptions, invited me over to her place.
50

“Why don't you come to my place?' I asked. “I'm sure that if I go over to your place there will a hundred and one people there. Come over to my place. I have a lovely little cottage, in the heart of Dhaka, with a tin roof and a bamboo matting ceiling as well as a lovely little garden of fruit trees and hasnahena. Come, spend Sunday with me.”
She laughed. "Though I do not have much work, I am not free. Still.’” she hesitated, but then said, “Perhaps I will.” “You’ll have lunch' I asked. She nodded.
“Anything you don't eat?” “Just beef.” When I told my husband, he laughed, disbelieving. “You've invited the State Minister for Tribal Affairs? The RanimataP'
“So what?' I retorted. “She's my friend's mother, after all. And I’ve been to her place. And, even though she lived in a palace, the palace wasn't all that different from our house. Many of our private houses are much more ornately decorated than her palace.” So Ranimata came the next Sunday. She dismissed her car and asked it to return later. She looked around my little cottage, tin roof and all.
“Does it leak?' she asked, looking up at the ceiling. “Sometimes. We put buckets and bowls to catch the rain water, but it's always nice when all the holes have been plugged up and there are no leaks and the rain goes pitter-patter all night.” Next to my bedroom I had my study. As usual, my table was piled with books and papers. On the table, in a little space, was a writing pad, a page half-written, the pen sticking out from between the pages.
“What do you write?” she asked. “All sorts of things. Notes for classes. Papers for journals " but also stories,” I said, showing her the shelf with my books.
“Do you ever write about yourself?' she asked, looking at the titles and then pulling out a book.
“Sometimes,” I replied. “But usually I write about others.”
51

Page 32
“How do you know whether what you have written is good or no?'
“I don't always. Sometimes I think I have written something good and when people read it they agree that is good, but sometimes they don't like or understand what I have written. Especially when I don't say everything. People are lazy but writers do not have to tell them everything. After all, real life stories don't always tell everything.”
“Do you tell real stories?” she asked,
“Real stories?” “Yes, real stories about real people, about things that actually happened?”
“Sometimes,' I said, “but real stories have a habit of turning out badly unless one does something to them. Also one can't always tell the truth. Someone can get hurt.”
“But don't you sometimes think that real stories must be told?”
“Yes,' I said hesitantly. “I’ll tell you a story,” she said, “write it down if you can. It's about a young woman, nineteen years old, a girl really, who married the wrong man. He was tall and handsome and, when he proposed, her head swirled with excitement. He married her a week after meeting her and took her away to his kingdom in the mountains “ well, they weren't really mountains, they were hills really. There the beautiful young queen found that her powerful husband, who distributed land to his subjects, also often wanted something in return. Money yes, tax for land use because in the hills the land doesn't belong to anyone" not even the king who only keeps it for his subjects who pay him for its use " but also something other than money: their beautiful daughters “perhaps just for a night. In the hill girls are free to choose the men they wish to marry, and among the hill tribes there are trial marriages so virginity is not as prized as it is elsewhere in the world. Most girls choose their men. But the word is choice. Here the girls were forced
52

to submit to the hill chieftain. So even as the Raja slept with his young queen “impregnating her again and again so that for the seven odd years of their married life she remembers being sick almost every day and waddling around, heavily pregnant" he also enjoyed the droit de seigneur" I learned this word afterwards, learning that it was a right that European kings also enjoyed before they became ‘civilised.’
“In between her bouts of sickness and her giving birth, the young queen fell in love - no, not with the king, but with his younger brother. He was kind and gentle and sensitive, and he understood her pain and loneliness. They knew that they could never be lovers, but they would spend moments together" always surrounded by people so that any feelings they had could only be expressed during stolen moments.
“And then one day the Raja died. The queen was relieved. She was free - true there were children, but she could now marry the man who had loved her silently all these years. That was when the rumours started that the king had died in mysterious circumstances. He had been poisoned “ fingers pointed at the younger brother. He was ambitious, he wanted to marry the widowed queen. He wanted to kill the baby prince, the heir to the throne. The queen “she was only twenty-six years old “ was terrified.
“She decided that she wanted her son to live, but she
also wanted the man she loved to live. So, as Ranimata, she called a council of elders. Boldly she proclaimed that the prince's uncle, the Raja's younger brother, would be Regent until the child came of age.
“Seventeen years passed, years during which the Regent met the queen for official purposes and no more. How she looked forward to those official meetings/ The rumours faded but never disappeared. They were always there, like a sword over their heads. Like an old couple, their love settled down to friendship
S3

Page 33
“When the prince turned eighteen, he was crowned. The queen was happy. Now her son was old enough to look after himself and the chiefdom. Perhaps she could finally marry the man she loved. She hinted as much to her son.
“Impossible, he said. "Don't you think that I have heard the story of how you and he poisoned my father?
“The queen did not plead any further. Seven years later, when the king was twenty-five, he changed his Chief Minister. At the annual durbar he thanked his uncle for the work he had done, first as Regent and then as Chief Minister, and told him that he had served the chiefdom long enough. It was time to retire. Perhaps even to go abroad for rest and relaxation.
“It wasn't a holiday the king was offering. It was exile. The prince bowed and accepted.
“That evening he came to say farewell to the queen he had loved and for whose sake he had so staunchly guarded and guided the young king. For twenty years he lived abroad" and the queen remained locked up in her mountain world, remained there till a president released her and brought her to his capital. For twenty years she had written letters to the man she loved, letters in which she spoke of her love, but also about the fibum cultivation and the waterfalls and the houses on stilts.
“For twenty years he had replied, brief notes about how he was, where he was, what he was doing. Bare letters that mentioned not a word of what he had felt or continued to feel about her. And then a week back she got a letter from him saying that he was tired. He wanted to come home. How long could he stay in exile, alone? What was the queen to tell him?
- “My son is Raja and I am the State Minister for Tribal Affairs. What do I tell him?'
It was her story that she was telling me" as I had guessed halfway through the telling. This old woman, dressed in widow's white, without rings or chains or bracelets, without any touch of colour on her lips, her wrinkles still slight but very much there round her eyes and her lips proclaiming her age " she was Laila
54

and Sohni, she was Heer and Hero. The only difference was she was alive as was her Majnu and Mahiwal, her Ranjha and Leander. For whom had she put on white? For the king or her lover, the king's brother?
“You write. Tell me, is it worth it after all these years to marry? Or shall we continue to pretend that our relationship is merely of sister-in-law and devar? I am not really afraid of people saying I poisoned my husband. Because we didn't. It was a lie “ but alie that everyone preferred to the truth" that he had collapsed over a young girl while making love and that his dead body had to be pried loose from her by six men while the young girl screamed in pain and horror. The young woman was never sane again until the day she drowned herself in the river.
“Tell me,” she said again, “what would you as a writer say? What would you as a woman do?”
They are both old, I thought, past the age when men and women are attracted to each other physically, when they have to touch and mingle their bodies and their fluids, but their love had not dwindled into the familiarity of old married couples. She was as nervous as a young woman on a first date. And she was asking me, not as Rajeshwari's friend but as a woman and a writer.
She looked into my eyes and sighed. “No, you cannot tell me what to do. And perhaps I will allow things to go on as they have before. We are both old. Old men and women can be together as young men and women can't. So perhaps the rumours will no longer go around as usual. But one day,” she said, "you must promise me, one day when he and I are dead, you will tell our story to the world. I want my grandchildren if not my children to know that I am not a murderer, that the man I loved “ love" is not a murderer. And yet, in telling it “ in clearing my reputation and his “ must the whole truth be told of how their father and grandfather died?” “If truth must be told, I said, “it must be the whole truth.' “Very well then, the whole truth. But tell them also how I loved one man all my life and how he loved me all of his. And also tell the world that it wasn't fear of being labelled murderers
S5

Page 34
that kept us from marrying but the desire of not wanting to shame my children before the whole world. By the time I am gone, the truth will not hurt as much perhaps. Wait to tell my story until he and I are dead.’
We had lunch, a quiet, sombre lunch, and then her car was there.
We met after that again, once or twice a year. And then the government changed, and her ministership was gone. She returned to her home in the hills, alone. The man she had loved was killed in a plane crash while returning home. The Raja performed the last rites of his uncle, spoke about how much he owed the man who had been Regent while he was a small child. The Ranimata died shortly afterwards, suddenly, in her sleep.
I would like her to know that I have kept my promise to
her.
56

ISHWARIS CHILDREN
Shabnam Nadiya
Ishwari was the only river I had ever really seen, and the truest. Some people called her Isri as well. My grandfather explained it to me one day. It was Allah above and this goddess down below. Her names were for her power and her beauty. Dadajan wove fantastic tales around her - her rage, her sorrow, her bounty, her greed inundated the rhythms of his speech and invaded my boyhood imaginings.
We lived in Dhaka, but my Dadajan lived at Noapara, our ancestral village. He was a large man, his girth befitting a man of his worth and station in life. His eyes crinkled when he smiled and sometimes when he wanted to but didn't. His beard was mostly white with slivers of black proclaiming the youth that still flowed in his veins. He always wore a freshly laundered and starched white skullcap. These were never bought; my grandmother always knitted them for him.
We would visit Dadajan twice or thrice a year. He, however, visited us frequently. He would arrive with a man in tow carrying coconuts, earthen pots full of live fish and, twice a year, gargantuan sacks filled with rice from his fields. He himself would come bearing stories. Invariably the stories were about Ishwari - the river was swallowing up land like a starving madwoman “She's a hungry one,' Dadajan would tell me. “She's eating me right Out of house and home.” The rampaging waves of Ishwari were engulfing huge
Forthcoming in the anthology: A Stranger Among Us: Stories of Cross Cultural Collision and Connection. Or Books/University of Illinois Press, U.S.A.
57

Page 35
chunks of land - a lot of which belonged to my grandfather. She was washing away houses and fields; villages disappeared in a matter of days. But Ishwari also gave it back, he told me. “She chews and chews, and spits it right out. No saying where that land’ll turn up, though it's better and more wholesome than before.” Still, it was these regurgitations that Dadajan had so much trouble with. The fertile lush lands that emerged from Ishwari's womb were desired by many - whether they were rightful claimants or not. There were frequent arbitrations required and even visits to the law courts Over who the newly arisen chars belonged to. Dadajan would come to consult my father frequently on these matters: as the only son, all of it would most certainly be his one day. I would sitby Dadajan's lap submerged in sleepy comfort as they discussed the status of this piece of land or that, hearing about the violence and the persistence of charuas, char-bandhas, as these char-people strove to settle the newly surfaced landmasses, learning of squatter's rights and other legalese of land disputes.
Whenever we were visiting, I would always accompany Dadajan on his business errands. However, I remember being taken to see a char only once. It was winter then and Ishwari was at her driest. Dadajan was going to see some people on a newly arisen char. We went part of the way on the small éosha that Dadajan kept for his personal use. As the slim shape of the é0sha slid along the dark riverbed, I longed for the clearer waters of the rainy season. We had two of Dadaian's kamlas with us. Abdul Chacha and Alam Chacha were the most trusted of all the men who worked for him. They were brothers and there were other members of their family who worked for ours - had done so for generations. Abdul Chacha, the elder, had worked for my Dadajan ever since he had been capable of bludgeoning sun-hardened clods of earth to ready the fields for planting. He accompanied my grandfather everywhere, a black umbrella and a cloth bag containing necessities for both men hung from his shoulder. Alam Chacha responsibility at that time was to lug me (and another black umbrella) around whenever
58

Dadajan took me on his business errands to show me off - the only son of his only son. Alam Chacha had rowed the single-oar éosha as far as the river had allowed. “We'll have to walk now, Babu, Dadajan told me in his rumbly voice. He led the way, striding with his silver-topped walking cane in hand. Abdul Chacha followed holding the umbrella over his head. I was put astride Alam Chachas shoulders. He had to hold the umbrella up higher than usual to accommodate my head. It must have been quite uncomfortable for him, perhaps even painful - for carrying a six year old boy is no joke, but he never complained or even appeared put out. Or perhaps he did and I simply remained unaware of it, secure in the unfeeling obliviousness of the young
The banks on both sides were splotched here and there with dried aash and grass, like the fine sun-bleached thinning hair of the very old. The verdant riverbanks of Ishwari in full spate had disappeared. As we walked on, the sparse vegetation dwindled as the recognizable riverbanks melded into white sand. The pale winter sun had found the one place where it could live its former glory and showed no mercy. The sand and the sun dazzled and benumbed my little-boy eyes: the stark whiteness was everywhere, everything around me seemed to glow. It seemed a landscape of an unimagined world, as if I had entered dream-time. Even the sounds of the world appeared to have changed. Gone was the steady thrum of Ishwari; the calm bustle of the household and of the village as they went about their day was a distant dream. Instead, all I could hear was the constant rhythmic swishing as the sand shifted beneath our feet and the discordant cry of a hawk as it circled far above us.
This was Ishwari with her water gone, sucked away by winter. The river lay like a tired old lizard sunning its underbelly. I have no idea how either my grandfather or his men knew where we were, or where we were going, for it seemed an endless journey to me as we trudged on and on within that unchanging lucent glare. Safely ensconced on Alam Chacha shoulders, it seemed as if it was I who was becoming weary with each step.
59

Page 36
Then suddenly harsh green erupted in front of my eyes. There were trees and houses. As we neared I saw that although they looked fairly new, the houses were built similar to our cowsheds. Simple structures of woven mats and bamboo slats held together with twine, they were easy to dismantle and put up again. Yet even our cowsheds were roofed with tin, while these were thatched. There were children playing in front of the shacks. Most of them were dressed in rags of indeterminate color while a few were naked except for talismans and tabies tied to their waists with the traditional black string. They stopped as they caught sight of us and stared. Abdul Chacha called out, “Hey, where's Kamrun Munshi, do you know?” None of the children moved. “Didn't my words reach your ears?' He bellowed, “Call Kamrun Munshi and tell him that Chowdhury Shaheb of Noapara is here.” They scattered before him like a flock of sparrows.
We moved into the shade of the few banana trees that bordered the settlement and waited. Alam Chacha lowered me to the ground A few minutes later a woman appeared, her head and part of her face covered with the anchal of her ragged sari. I could see more women gathered a bit away, craning their necks trying to get a glimpse of us and keep their heads covered at the same time. The woman stood in front of Dadajan and touched her hand to her forehead in greeting, “Salaam Aleiéum.' My grandfather inclined his head graciously in response.
“Well?' It was as if it was Abdul Chacha's curtness, not a sudden breeze that ruffled the sand at her feet. She said something in an inaudible voice. "Speak up, woman,” ordered Abdul Chacha. “Where is Kamrun Munshi?”
She raised her face slightly and repeated "He's nothere.” She paused and added, "He's gone to the market. This time of day, the men...”
“So who are you then?” It surprised me that Abdul Chacha seemed to be speaking to her as he was, why was he so angry at this woman?
60

“I’m his wife,” came the low reply.
“Wife! Oh, you're his woman. You charuas...”
“Abdul,” the calm voice of Dadajan interjected. “There is no need to be like that.” Abdul Chacha immediately bowed his head and took his place behind Dadajan. “So you are Kamrun's wife? Well, I am Akram Chowdhury from Noapara. We have come a long way. And I have my grandson with me. Do you think we could sit in the shade somewhere and have a drink of water? It is unfortunate that your husband is away. I had business with him.” The covered head bowed and turned away murmuring an indistinct invitation. We followed her to her yard. The other women trailed behind us, their chatter a gentle susurration like the swirl of river waters.
When we reached her yard, Kamrun Munshi’s wife set out a wooden follhouei for Dadajan to sit on. The low stool looked old and weatherworn, but the intricate carving still bore witness to the loving craft that had gone into its making. She said something to some of the other women who slipped away immediately. They stood there, the rest of them, just behind Kamrun Munshi’s wife, as we inspected the ramshackle shed of her home, the neat yard with its corner covered with pats of dried cow dung, chewed up pith of sugarcane and a heap of unidentifiable rags to be used for fuel or perhaps to be sold. A washing line was drawn taut from the house to a banana tree, on which hung a red and green striped sari as tattered as the One she was wearing. A few scraggly looking chickens were clucking about aimlessly.
“You seem to have settled in quite nicely,” Dadajan said with a proprietary air as he sat on the follhouei. He pointed his cane to the chickens, “Do they lay well? Do you have a cock for breeding?' There was a coarseness in Dadajan's voice and the way he spoke, as unfamiliar to me as the shimmering terrain we had just traversed. As he spoke, the women who had left returned - one of them
61

Page 37
carried a small wooden piri and the others came with eatables. She placed the piri near Dadajan's feet and motioned for me to sit on it. Two tin mugs were placed near his feet for us as well as a few batashas and coconut marus in a battered tin bowl. To offer just water to a visitor was unthinkable, even to these people.
Kamrun Munshi's wife came and stood near me. She motioned to me with her hand and said in her soft voice, “Eat, Babu.’’ Her anchal had fallen away and I could see her face clearly for the first time. She had the kind of spurious prettiness of the countrywoman that faded with age and work. I chose a creamy brown batasha and sucked on it, the crumbly sweetness melting in my mouth. Dadajan picked up a mug and took a sip. “This is very good. Go on Babu, try it.' I drank from the other mug. Sugar water. Dadajan Smacked his lips and asked, “Where is Kamrun Munship Leaving his young wife all alone in this place. Where are the other men?” The children appeared suddenly - their ghost-faces peeked out from behind the women, peered out from the corner of the house. They watched us as silently as their mothers.
“The men folk are not home this time of day. It is so in the villages too.”
“Why has Munshi gone to the marketplace?”
“We had some eggs, and some vegetables. Also some fish from Ishwari. He will sell them and bring rice.”
“Eggs, vegetables. I see you've begun planting' Dadajan said as he looked at the patches of darker earth to the west. “Watermelon, tomatoes, cauliflower. That is good, it will hold the soil down. So you have quite settled in. How many of you are there?'
The woman stood in front of us with her eyes lowered and dug at the earth with her toe. “In our house?' she asked.
62

“No, no,” Dadajan waved his cane impatiently. “All of you, here. How many?” “Oh, a few households,” she replied vaguely. Dadajan looked at Alam Chacha and inclined his head slightly. Alam Chacha slipped quietly away through the yard into the settlement. There was a sly chittering of insects all around us. Dadajan Smiled, "Listen, bei, you people have just come here. I know it will be very difficult; mainlanders often have no understanding of the hardships of the charua life. But I am a man who lives under Allah's eye. I have to see to it that all within my power live lives that are useful and fair, and that justice is done to them.”
Kamrun Munshi’s wife looked at the ground as she said softly but distinctly, “We work. It is very hard, but we work as Allah allows us.'
Dadajan nodded, “Yes, yes, that is as it should be. But there are many kinds of people in this world of Allah's. There will be men who will say that this land is not ready to be settled yet, that you must not live here yet. The chars that arise, there are many disputes as to who owns them.” He stroked his beard, "Me, I am a simple man. I leave it to the laws of Allah and the laws of the land to tell me what is mine and what I should have. But others, you see, they are not always so scrupulous. That is what I wanted to talk to Kamrun Munshi about.” There was a silence as Dadajan paused. Kamrun Munshi’s wife looked away to the half-hidden children. They were losing their unaccustomed diffidence and were edging closer to us. “There are those who think nothing of burning up a few houses, uprooting fruit-bearing trees, bullying and intimidating innocent people.” Dadajan resumed, “They tell themselves that the things that they destroy, belong, after all, only to charuas. I do not say that this is right, merely that they think like this. Yet it is a sin to see hardworking people like you get hurt this way.' Dadajan paused again. He picked up a naru from the bowl in front of him and nibbled on the flat brown-colored disc. “You must tell whoever
63.

Page 38
comes that you live here for me,” he said abruptly, “Then they will no longer bother you.” Kamrun Munshi’s wife raised her face suddenly and looked directly at Dadajan for the first time, “But no one has bothered us.”
"They might. They will.” Dadajan popped the whole maru in his mouth and munched noisily. “Make no mistake - they will come.”
He took a sip of water and picked up a batasha. As he was about to take a bite, the woman said, “We have lived on chars before. Our men know what to do.'
Dadajan smiled. “Of course they do. But what I say will make your life easier. Tell Kamrun Munshi to come and talk to me. Then he can talk to the others.” There was another pause as instead of putting it into his mouth, Dadajan crumbled the half-moon of the batasha in his hand and let the pieces drop away to the ground. “The fish you talk about, the fish that he has gone to sell, Ishwari's fish is not just for everyone. Most of the river and the fish gher in this region, I own the leases.” Dadajan shook his forefinger at her playfully. “Where is he catching them from?' The woman pursed her lips as if the words that had already escaped her mouth had been too much. “I will be going to see the administrative officer. As a local man I feel it is my responsibility to watch over these new lands. I must tell him that he is not to worry, that I have let good people, good charuas settle here. I must tell him how many houses, and people and animals are here, it is important that he know these things.” He pointed his cane at the chickens as they ambled mindlessly nearer. “You have chicks too, I see. You breed them to sell?' The woman hesitated for a moment, then nodded.
Just as Dadajan asked “How many do you get a month?’, Alam Chacha walked back with a rooster held tightly under one arm. He came and stood behind me.

“Boro Amma will want to cook moragpolao with this for the Young Master,” he said. My grandmother always cooked this dish for my father when we came visiting. Usually she had two or three roosters all plumped up awaiting our arrival. Perhaps she had forgotten this time.
Dadajan smiled indulgently and stroked his beard, “My son, my only son, has brought his family to visit his old parents. He grew up here, and so my men they all feel like brothers to him. They are always careful to look after him properly when he is here.” He spread out his hands, palm upwards, "They love him like a brother and like to give him all they can.” He turned to Alam Chacha, “Why don't you tie its legs up? You'll find it easier to carry.”
The woman had been looking steadily and unblinkingly at the rooster while Dadajan spoke. Suddenly she spoke in a very clear voice, “Of course. Your only son, of course, he must have this. There is no need to pay us for it. You must take it as a gift, from us poor charuas.” She became silent again as if this speech had wearied her, and she had said all that needed to be said for the measure of that day.
“We must leave now. Tell Kamrun Munshi to come and see me,' said Dadajan and strode towards the path by the banana grove, swishing his cane in the air with a casual disregard. The delicate silver filigree on the handle winked in the sun with a knowing air. Suddenly it slipped from his hand and whacked the face of a little boy who was standing close to the path watching us leave. "Ahha. Poor thing, is he hurt too much?' The half naked child gave a soft whimper and tottered towards the women who stood silent. None of them moved to gather him in, none of them even looked at him. “Is he one of yours?' Dadajan asked Kamrun Mumshi's wife. “Abdul give a ten taka note to the child. Poor thing. Hey baccha, buy some chocolates okay? Come Babu,” he called me, “We must
gO.
6S

Page 39
The woman did not answer nor did she move to take the money from Abdul Chacha. Dadajan walked away. Abdul Chacha waited a few moments then tossed the note to the ground and followed him. Alam Chacha had already picked me up and sat me on his shoulders for the return journey.
We were well on our way before I asked why none of the women had picked the child up, wasn't his mother there? “Charuas are like that,' Dadajan told me. “They move around so much. The very soil that they settle on, that itself is temporary, no saying whether it will remain the same or even be there in a month's time. So they become different than us. They hold this life Allah has so graciously given us lightly, as of no consequence. And so they do not have proper family feeling, not even for children.”
The rooster squawked once, then subsided to a guttural cackling as it hunghead downwards from Abdul Chacha left shoulder. “They are like that. Still I try to do what is within my power for them. In the eyes of Allah, we are all one, all equal,” I remember Dadajan saying as the boat slid smoothly into the water. If the journey there had seemed long and arduous, the return trek seemed as endless as the weary waters of Ishwari.
It seems to me that it was merely the shimmer of sun and sand that burned that visit so permanently into my mind. The char that I had seen is as dead as Dadajan now and it is only my act of remembrance that gives life to that charua woman. The clarity of those images dulls the other childhood memories that I so desperately long to relive. I remember listening to the steady splash of the oar for a while. And I remember Dadajan stroking his beard with a quiet satisfaction and saying, “We are all Ishwari's children.”
66

THE DANCE OF MIRA
Mridula Garg
The sun was out again after a heavy shower. Bright and sparkling. And a breeze was blowing. Rain-washed; fresh, cool. Not like the one before the shower. One could hardly call it a breeze. It was more like the inhaling and exhaling of short breaths that left the air sultry as before. Only sometimes would it waft strongly enough to make my dupata ripple and allow me to exhale freely with it.
The breeze now felt washed and light as if it had a good cry. The tree tops danced, ready to take wing and fly away. They would have too had their roots not been firmly embedded in the earth. I was on the roof hanging out the clothes on the clothesline. That was all that the sun's coming out meant for me. Wash the clothes and hang them up. The rain has soaked them, take them down. The sun is out again, put them back. The clothes are dry, bring them in. Never mind. At least it allowed me to go to the roof twice a day. More often if there was a sudden shower.
I always took a good look around when I was on the roof. There was a single room tenement on the roof opposite that lay directly in my line of vision. I could see a table and chair through its window. A boy sat there reading, morning, evening, always. Sometimes when it grew dark early in the evening because of the gathering clouds, I saw him reading by the light of a table lamp. Why did he study all day long? Did he not have anything better to do?
I did not go down immediately after hanging out the clothes today. Instead I stretched out on the string cot which lay on the roof. Ma was out at the temple. Had left after assigning me dozens of chores. Scrub the utensils, I don't want to see a single stain in the éadai.
67

Page 40
Cook the lentils, clean the rice before soaking it, chop the vegetables fine. I’ll decide later whether to cook them now or in the evening. But remember, wash the clothes first and hang them out to try. Don't know how long the sun will last. And yes, put the pickle jar out in the sun too.
School was closed today. A special picnic had been arranged after the annual function yesterday. All my classmates must be out there. Not I. Ma did not even let me go to the function. I had just about managed to wash and hang the clothes to dry. The other chores lay undone. Ah, well, all in good time. Let me look at the open, blue sky for five minutes with the fluffy white clouds swimming across like ducklings. Not rain clouds. These were the ones, which came after a shower. Holding a few leftover droplets of water, they cavorted and leapt in the breeze like mischievous children, who always came late to school, who never managed to attend the prayer assembly, however hard they ran for it No punishment could change their carefree ways. Punish them today and the next day they were late again. They just could not walk to school without stopping to kick pebbles on the way. Everyone said.’ You will come to no good; remain vagabonds for ever.' Wish I knew the pleasure of being a vagabond. They were lucky. They knew. It must be some pleasure indeed for them not to want to forgo it at any cost.
Why do they never tell girls, beware you shall be a vagabond All they say is, “If you don't pass school, no decent boy will marry you. You will hang around our necks like a millstone for the rest of your life.” Try reclining on the bed for a minute and they are at your throat, “You lazy lump, get fat will you. Remember, no decent boy wants to marry a fatso.”
Decent boy! Like the ninny in the opposite room! The bookworm must be sitting there studying with nary a thought for the fluffy clouds. I brought my gaze down from the sky to his level. Gods above, the spectacle I saw. He was standing near the parapet and dancing away. Peacocks dance in the rain, madmen in freshly washed sunshine? Poor
68

fellow. Too much reading had driven him nuts. What if he jumped across towards me? I sat up aghast then realized, that way he could see me. I went flat again. No, he could not jump on me; a whole alley ran between the two houses. Once your eyes were fixed on the blue expanse above, you tended to forget such earthy details.
I could not remain inert for long. How he danced! I had to sit up to see better. He swayed to one side like the branches of a tree in the wind. Then straightened with a jerk. Trees do too. He threw his hands out as if spraying flowers on the earth then moved them in circles, the way the éathase dancers do. His feet moved in unison, in perfect beat with the movement of the hands and the neck.
Tat Tatathai tathai tathai. Tat tata thai thathai thathai Thai tatatatat tatat. Thai tatalat tatat tatat.
I know. I know. They are the bol of the éathaé dance. Ono, I know nothing of the chaéears and movements of eafhae. As if Ma would ever allow me to learn it A eafhae dance class was held in the school after regular classes. Some of my classmates learnt dancing there. If only I could dance! I had asked Ma once if I could join, she had nearly pulled my hair out by the roots. 'You whore, dance will you, in a brothel’ she had hissed.
I used to hang around for a few minutes watching the others dance. Some of the beats got fixed in my memory. I have a great memory for such things. But ask me to repeat a lesson and it goes kaput. They were to give a performance at the function yesterday. So the practice had gone on day after day. I was lucky to get to see the rehearsal since it was held during school hours. But no picnic for me and no seeing the real function »
The drops in the clouds were bubbling. Some must have spilled
Over and fell on my hair And honest, they were what I felt clinging to my eyelashes like tears.
69

Page 41
What did the bookworm care? He was cavorting out there like a drunk. That was no éathae he was dancing. He followed no rules, no pattern. His body and soul moved in a rhythm of his own design. He danced as and however he felt like, free of all encumbrances.
Shall I dance too, I thought slipping off the cot. No. Suppose I got so engrossed in it that I didn't hear Ma coming back. What if she heard the tap-tap of my feet? She will chop off my head for sure. “Whom were you enticing with your dancing, you whore!” Whom is he trying to entice? The thought made me stand stock-still. Misra teacher used to say the peacock danced during the rain to attract the peahen. What about him? Could he see me from his roof? Like a fool I had gone and repeated what Misra teacher had said to Ma. She had given me a resounding slap on the face,” So this is what
you learn in school, you hussy
Things were so much better for us when we lived in the village, Ma and I. Father worked in the city and sent us money regularly. When I was studying in the village school, I always came first in my class, honest. I was not the dullard I am here. I don't know what went wrong but suddenly the money stopped coming. Ma waited and wailed and went about making inquiries about father. Then she wept and ranted some more and one day arrived at his address in the city with me in tow. God, what a Mahabharat there was between the two of them. Father took hold of us, one by one and threw us out of the house. He locked it after us and disappeared. Ma stayed put in the verandah with me. Dear God, I almost died of hunger. I would have too but for Misra teacher who stayed next door. She heard me crying; came and took me home and fed me but Ma refused to eat a single morsel. She sat there like on a hunger strike. When father reappeared after three days, the neighbors came down hard upon him. What if we had died or something, whose fault would it have been. Both of us looked half dead anyway; mother from starving and I from fear. He had to admit defeat and take us in. But the fighting and the threats, the abuses and the
70

curses went on for days on end. Then things settled down. Or maybe we just got used to them. Misra teacher got me admitted to her school. Ma stopped watching over father and shifted her eagle eye to me. If she had her way she would not have allowed me to set a foot out of the house ever. Not even to go to school. But then how would we have got a decent boy. It was for his sake that she forced herself to let me attend school. The only way to get one was to pass high school at the very least.
Dear God, what was that fool of a boy up to now? Trying to kill himself, was he? There he was up on the water tank, whirling his arms like one possessed. And why did he keep craning his neck to peer into the sky? Look down, you blockhead, look down. One false step and you will hurtle down that narrow tank with your head split like a melon. Remember you nut, you are standing on a narrow ledge three floors above the ground. My heart was in my mouth every time he fluttered almost to the edge. But he was no novice that's for sure. His feet remained planted firmly on the tank all the time. He might whirl across right to the edge, Swinging as if in a trance but he always managed to retreat in time, never missing a step of the dance. He was truly an accomplished dancer, better than our dance master at school. But when did the bookworm ever practice it to perfection; he always had his head buried in a book. I had been watching him for full six months now; watching that room from my roof had been my one diversion. All I ever saw him do was sit at his table and read. I certainly never saw him dance before.
Before him, an elderly couple had lived in that room. I watched them too. The woman was hardly ever cooped inside. She was always out on the roof, picking and cleaning grain or pulses or something or the other. I loved to watch the clothes, she hung out to dry on the clothesline. They were so perfectly pegged to the line that they puffed and flapped in unison like balloons filled with air. I could watch them forever. They looked ready to fly
71

Page 42
away into the sky if one so much as blew at them. How I longed to see them do it one day. Swiftly ah so swiftly would they go. Ma twisted my ear as she pointed them out to me, “Look you duffer that's how one should hang out clothes, pegged properly on both sides.' I just could not get it right. My attention wandered and I either ran short of pegs or the line ran short.
It was his dance growing swifter by the minute that reminded me of the clothes that never gathered speed enough to take wing. He was moving his feet and whirling his hands as if uncoiling something. That was what the boys in my village did when they flew kites. What a nincompoop I was. That was exactly what he was doing. Flying a kite. Since I could not see the kite or the string attached to it from my roof, I thought he was dancing in the rainwashed sunshine.
But where was the kite? Must be high above in the sky somewhere westward. He was gazing in that direction. But where, oh where? I stood on tiptoe, craned my neck and looked as far out as possible in very direction, but could see nothing. I stepped right to the edge, sheltered my eyes from the glare of the sun with my hand and looked up and down for good measure but drew a blank. Where was the kite? How far away that I could not see it. What were its colors? How I loved to fly a kite. Not that I was allowed to. But when I was in the village I managed to play truant and do it on the sly with Hariya, my next-door neighbor. His father used to say he who has not flown a kite under the open sky with the raindrops spattering his face has lived in vain. Not many girls got a chance to enjoy that kind of freedom. The only way to feel the raindrops on their faces was to swing a measured distance on the swing. Whenever Iran out in the rain, Ma dragged me back. But I managed to fool her and slip away with Hariya to the fields to fly a kite. Most of the time she did not know of it but even when she did, she just gave me a routine scolding. There in the village she did not beat me at the slightest pretext. Nor did she curse me the way
72

she does now. “If you continue like this you will turn into a home wrecker; a whore like her.' Only once had I asked her, “Like whom?' She had thrashed me so badly that Misra teacher had to come and rescue me. She had made Ma promise that she shall not vent her anger on me. She did refrain from hitting me too hard after that but I could not help think that a beating was better than a tongue- lashing and this constant curfew. She lets me go to the roof only because her gout makes it hard for her to climb the stairs. But I have to just take an extra moment there for her to start yelling “Are you dead you hussyl Has a jinn gobbled you or a witch snatched you away?'
In the beginning, despite her gout, she would come hobbling after me. But when she saw there was no young boy anywhere in the vicinity, she gave up chasing after me. If she were to see him dancing and me watching him, she would have a fit. Bash my head, cut me into little pieces, God knows what not. I shivered with apprehension. She might be home for all I knew. She had locked the outer gate from outside and taken the key with her before leaving. She always did that. With no need to knock, she would just unlock it and enter soundlessly like a witch and grab me. I'd better go down and check. I turned to go but stood frozen where I
W2S,
Look out! Carefull I wanted to cry out as I saw the dancing nut's foot half over the edge of the tank. Thank God, he had turned back. Aha, now I could see the spool of the string in his hands. He is throwing out his hands to unwind it further and flinging his head back to look far ahead into the sky. That meant the kite had risen higher and gone farther away. If he could see it why could not I? Once more I stood on tiptoe stretched my back and neck to catch a glimpse of the runaway kite but failed. It must be that tall acacia tree which was blocking my view. Why did the accursed thing have to grow so tall and widel People needed to see things at a distance didn't they?
73

Page 43
So be it. I’ll run down to the alley and look for it from there. Maybe I could catch a glimpse of it. Iran down, securing my dupatta well over my head and chest. It was only when I had given the gate a push that I remembered that it was locked from outside. I was a prisoner inside. At least the roof was mine. I ran back to it.
There he was dancing away, totally unaware of my being or not being on the roof. Nincompoop Blockhead! He could surely take his eyes off the kite for a second to look in my direction. How could he not feel my intense gaze on his body? Ah, but that was the whole point. He did not fly the kite casually for fun like the village boys did. His whole being was concentrated on it; he had become the kite. His hands unwinding the string or pulling it back had become part of the spool. That was why I had not seen it for so long. His feet moved only so far as necessary for his hands to retain control of the kite. That was why his feet and hands swayed in such divine rhythm, as if his whole body was on song. If only I could sing and dance like him!
I was flooded with the passionate memory of the last Janamashtmi evening. The priest had suddenly got up and started dancing as he sang, “With anklet bells on her feet Mira danced.” Some women had joined him. Others seated firmly on the ground had begun to sway in rhythm as if dancing away. Ma was one of them. I was astonished to see tears streaming down her eyes. Never had I seen her weep silently; it was always to the accompaniment of loud abuses and curses. She seemed unaware of herself or me. That was why I could stare at everyone without being rebuked. Seeing Malike that, my heart had filled unexpectedly with pity and love for her. I liked this Ma, in rapture, immersed so deep within herself that she no longer cared what she did.
Rapture! That was the real thing, not the beat or the rhythm. His kite flying was like a ecstatic dance because he was in rapture, unaware of me or anything else but his kite. Had he been aware of
74

me, he would have been no different from the boys of my village, with whom I had often gone flying kites.
I felt my heart in my mouth. If he were unaware of everything, he would not be conscious of the parapet either. If anything distracted him, he will lose his concentration and go hurtling down. I went still as a statue, not daring even to breathe properly for fear of disturbing him.
I began to understand him. He was flying the kite in the same way he studied every day; giving his whole self to it. Like Arjun. I recalled the story our teacher had told us some time back. Guru Dronacharya asked his pupils to aim their arrows at the eye of a bird on a tree and added, “But tell me first what do you see around you.' Each of them gave a colorful account of all there to see in the surrounding area. But Arjun said,” All I can see is the eye of the bird.' Now at last I understood what it meant and why, Dronacharya was full of praise for him. I was face to face with an Arjun now and there was I, a good for nothing, who saw the whole wide world but never the bird's eye. Ma was forever at me for not attending to first things first. Misra teacher also said, “If you put your mind wholly on your studies, you will find everything become easy.' I had no control over my mind. It just wandered here and there, fuming at Ma and grieving over father. He did not even bother to look at me. Why did we ever leave the village and come here to this city? I did not have to live in fear there as I do here. What if I get a "decent boy” like father? Will I also turn into a wailing quarrelsome woman like Map I did not want to become like her. Not ever. But whoever cared for my wanting or not wanting anything.
Right now I wanted to fly a kite. Could I? It was easy for him; he was a boy. He could sit on a chair and study if he wanted to or dance on the roof flying a kite. He could decide for himself. No one told him to stop living and wait for a decent boy. He was
75

Page 44
never taunted or abused or beaten, I'm sure; or told,” Why did you not die at birth you devil. The son died but you had to live on, you wretch!’ Yes, I had a brother who died at birth. Had he lived he would have been as old as the boy opposite and the two of us would have flown kites together. But who knows, he might have flown it alone and I stood on the sidelines watching forlorn.
Look, look what a huge kitel Bick and blue. Flying at us through the wind swift as an arrow. But it was coming from the east while the bookworm was staring towards the west. That meant it was someone else's kite, not ours. Must be coming from a house in the row behind ours. Imagine that dotard hadn't even seen it! Turn around, you joker, if you don't take yours out of its way, it is sure to slash it. What is the use of craning your neck and taking the kite higher and higher in the sky if you don't protect it from the enemies, you booby? Look out! I was about to scream but a thought made me swallow the words and stay still. My yell could distract him. A moment's inattention could have him go hurtling down to the alley like a slashed kite, his head smashed to bits. What kind of concentration was this that made you unaware of the enemy and allowed him to cut down your kite? That was not concentration; that was idiocy. The black and blue kite was swirling and Sashaying at frightening speed towards his house. Where was ours? What color was it? Why could I not see it? Please, please turn around; don't let our kite be mowed down. I prayed as I filled his vision with my awareness and passionate longing. Look. Look with my eyes once, please. His neck turned slightly. His hands began to move more deftly on the spool. He pulled and straightened the string, turned it slightly, raised his hands to loosen it and then he began to pull back real hard. Hurrah! He had seen it! He had seen it! The blue-black kite retreated. His hands moved towards his chest. The enemy retreated further. But why could I still not see ours? I clung to the parapet as I hung far out over it. I was determined to see Our kite come racing along. I shall see it. I will.
76

At last! There it came. I crowed in delight. What colors, right red and green. It flew in Swishing and with one deft stroke slashed the black kite's neck. Then it went weaving along to his roof as he pulled the reel and coiled the spool. Neither the beat of his feet nor the inclination of his steadfast neck had altered one bit. Only his gaze had moved to fix straight ahead on his kite. As had mine. What a lovely spanking new kite it was. He kept reeling in the string. Now the kite was directly above his roof, now above his head, now in his hands. Now he will run down to claim the severed kite as his prize. The breeze was quite strong. It was carrying the falling kite in gusts hither and thither. It could plummet to the alley or get stuck on the way in some tree. Please God, I prayed, let it fall in the alley so he could go grab it.
He stepped off the tank carefully on to the roof. I clapped in joy. Goody! Now he will go down and get the trophy. He did not go down. Instead he went back into his room with his kite and spool. The prize idiot! Just how much of a booby one could be to let a vanquished kite go by? Let the blockhead be. I'll go down and get it myself. But how? The gate was locked. Buffeted by the wind, the severed blue-black kite came close to my roof. I pounced like a hawk to grab it but it slipped out of my grasp. Hanging precariously across the parapet, I reached Out again and again for it but it managed to evade me each time. It fooled around coyly for a while, then settled calmly on a branch of the acacia tree. I felt like yelling at him.'You booby, go get your trophy. Who do you think you are, the President or something that you can let your loot go.” But what was the use? He was ensconced in his chair, absorbed in a book far, far away from me. All I could do was to weep. I flung myself on the string cot and sobbed with heartbreak.
I felt a fist strike my back and realized that Ma was back home. “You wretch,' she screamed as she struck me again and again,” Here you are playing coquette while everything is at sixes and sevens downstairs.”
77

Page 45
“O, O,” I cried out,” I have sprained my ankle. I can't walk. O, O.”
Ma hit me again but gently.” Can't you see where you are going, you hussy. Now let me help you get up. Come down, I'll massage it with hot oil.’
I screamed at the top of my lungs as soon as she touched my foot.
I had no idea how one was supposed to behave with a sprained ankle. Should I limp and how much or was I supposed not to be able to put my foot to the ground at all? Once I got up she was bound to realize it was a fib.
“Don’t yell! Do you want the whole neighborhood to hear you!” she admonished me.
Had the neighborhood heard me? I looked across. No reaction from the prize idiot. He sat unmoved reading his blasted book.
"Try to get up.” Ma said and pulled at my arm. I gave such a loud scream that she lost her grip.” Has the wretch broken a bone or what! O.K let me go get Misra Bahenujiʼ
Misra teacher! She will know I was faking the moment she looked at me. But if I could be alone with her, I'll manage to appease her. She was no tell- tale, I was sure of that
“Ma,” I said in honeyed tones to my mother.” How will you go up and down the stairs with your gout. Let her come up alone. You rest your feet, Ma.”
Ma was struck dumb. All her groaning and cursing evaporated in thin air. She had never heard me speak so sweetly to her before. Tears sprang to her eyes. She did not say anything, just pursed her lips, gave me along look, then turned herback and limped downstairs.
78

Great! Now all I had to do was to win over Misra teacher. She will be angry about my lying to Ma but if I promised never to do it again and also vowed to immerse myself in my studies, Arjun like, she will forgive me and also save me from Ma's wrath.
Anyway, I had some time before she came up. I got down from the cot, planted my feet firmly on the roof and began to dance just as he had danced; in a rapturous trance, without a care for the world. I felt I was both the spool and the kite. As I unwound myself I rose higher and higher in the sky
Footnotes
Glossary:
Kadai= deep frying pan Mahabharata= epic battle
Bahenji= sister
Kathak= A classical dance style Chakkar= a movement of kathak dance Bol= vocal beats of kathak dance Dupatta= long scarf worn with the punjabi suit Arjun= One of the Pandavas from the epic Mahabharata who was an ace archer Dronacharya- Arjun's teacher
79

Page 46
AUTUMN HARVEST
Feryal Ali Gauhar
At night the ocean was a field of barley when the wind flattens the ripening grain and the sheaves lie level with the earth. In the distance the lights of the fishing boats were fireflies dancing above the waves. And the gulls, they were the laughter of young children.
The air hung itself above the surface of the dark, whispering water, speaking in a language which only the hounded could hear.
He turned from his perch on the wall between himself and the sea and set off in the direction of the balloon vender. He walked quickly. In his hand he held enough money to buy the bright plastic airplane which hung from the pole held by the balloon vender like a shepherd's staff. He had not yet bought a gift for the younger girl. The airplane would do; the girl would like it, he was sure.
ck >k xk In her hand the many-folded paper nestled itself like a sleeping child. Zarmina had studied the markings on that sheet of paper as if she could make sense of the curves and flourishes which made up the words of this secret message. She had looked away when her mother's gaze had met hers. She knew she could never unravel this hatred, this festering enmity which had already claimed so many lives. With the unwavering certainty of worship, she had given her heart to Zahir Shah the day he had climbed onto the common roof of their homes and declared that she was his beloved, the one he would carry away and make his own, the one in whose eyes he saw the sun and the moon and rain clouds on a summer's day. She knew she could never surmount the distance which separated them after the killings, not even if she was to
80

remove her aching heart and place it on the palm of her father's calloused hand.
水本 米
It was still dark when she woke, the letter now pressed against her bosom. Stepping tenderly over the legs of her sisters and then gliding out of the room, her veil held in the tight clasp of her quivering mouth, she crossed the courtyard of her home without once looking back. In her hand she carried a small bundle, and in her heart there was nothing but the lament of a bride leaving her mother, never to return.
米 米 水
The bus stopped suddenly. Just ahead a crowd had gathered. She covered her face with the veil and looked out of the window, dread beating against her temples. A passenger was gesturing to the driver to step down and take a look at the body thrown by the side of the road. She peered into the abyss of the graveyard and made out a man's body, his face buried in the lavender and his clothes bloody. She shuddered, and then consoled herself with the thought that she would be with her beloved soon. He would be waiting for her, and together they would begin a new life unblemished by the anguish in the hearts of men and women who had buried a son or given away a daughter so that another son could live.
There was an argument; the driver did not stop. As the bus lurched forward, she turned to look again at the body of the dead man. In his hand he clasped something which looked like a toy, a plastic plane, a suitable gift for a young boy. She smiled; he wanted many sons, he had told her, and she had promised him the richness of an autumn's harvest.
81

Page 47
Poetry
SWEEPING THE FRONTYARD...
Anitha Thampi
The back aches, as the broom sweeps into memory, at dawn soil-pimples sprouted, on the front yard of the house in slumber
eyes deep shut. Perhaps the rain could have eased the ground last night. Earthworms must have stirred it under, toiling may be sleepless, to build tiny homes of earth. Only to be razed, to be spread, in finger-streaks the broom leaves behind. After the sweeper girl's morning dance, her Bent Backstep. The sweeping done, dawn alights Light falls, the eyes of the house open
82

No footprint,
Not even fallen leaves,
how clean it is!
The newspaper arrives
having scoured
the depths of night, it falls astumbling against the door.
Then she rises from clearing the shreds
So thirsty, she'd drink the coffee to its lees.
(From the collection Muttamadiéeumbol) translated by Dr J.Deviéa.
83

Page 48

9Nethra
Subscription Order form
We/ I wish to subscribe to Nethra. (Please Tick below for 1.2 or 3 year subscription)
Subscription SIL Rs. SAARC Other Tick
Countries below 1 Year (3 issues) 400.00 $ 20 $ 25 2 Year (2 x 3 issuess 5% off) 760.00 $ 38 $ 47.5 3 Year (3 x 3 issues 10% off) 100.00 $54 $ 67.5
All rates are inclusive of mailing cost (by air in case of foreign readers)
Mr. / Mrs. WMs First Nanne :
Last Name :
Address:
Telephone : Email:
We/l enclose a bank draft/Cheque * (in US Dollars) for in favour of
The International Centre for Ethnic Studies'.
* (For payment by cheque in any currency other than US Dollars please add on amount equivalent to USD 5.00 to cover bank charges)
Date Signature
Contact Detail: INTERNATIONAL CENTRE FORETHNIC STUDIES 2, Kynsey Terrace, Colombo 8, Sri Lanke. Tel: +9411 2685085 / 2679745 Fax: +c 411 2698048 E-mail : nethraGDicescolombo.org Website: www.icescolombo.org

Page 49


Page 50
Zubeica
(cirIs of IEad Chara
Kama
The Sorro
Mana
ene V.
Wa
Sweeping th Anina
en Lives a
ATIII Feryal A
PRINTED BY UNIE ARTS (PVT) LTD., 48B, BL0
 

Thoughts Mustafa
(eo at foOfor ee Thapa
фиake Shanisie
of Mone ng Dai
you know ...
e From Yaro
S Children
Nadliya
e of Mira a Garg
LHarvesť
| Gatunar
EMENDHAL. ROAD, COLOMBO 13, TEL: 2330195,