The Two Krishnas (16 page)

As if it wasn’t enough that Zainab had, by her very reappearance, sabotaged Atif’s place with Chacha, she now began to spend time over at the Rahman residence. Chacha would either drop her off on his way to work as if it were a detention center, or she would take a rickshaw over from their apartment nearby and spend the day helping Khadija with household chores.

Although close to his mother’s age, Zainab looked much older. She had a round, swollen face crowned by a shock of curly and prematurely graying hair, arthritic legs and a strangely masculine demeanor. Her clothes were drab and like her face, cheated of color. She seemed to say, “This is not the life I wanted and I’m not going to do a damn thing to disguise it with exuberance just to spare your feelings.” But underneath it all, there was also an unmistakable sadness about her and most of the time, when Zainab didn’t let out her husky laugh, she was quiet, lost, as if in another world that had continued without her and where she wished she could still be.

And all Atif could think was,
This? This is what Chacha was mourning for? But surely this can’t be her! She looks nothing like Rekha! She looks like a man.

At first, Atif tried never to look at her and when hard pressed, kept his responses to her to a minimum. But he could sense how wounded she was and found his alienation strategy tough to follow. It was as if something within her had died and she had resigned herself to a state of inner mourning, never speaking a word of it because what good would it do and how would it change anything? Besides, it looked like nobody wanted to talk about it anyway.

Before this, Zainab was rumored to have been rambunctious and bubbling with laughter. In a city like Bombay, where cultural iconography was freely borrowed for allegorical use, she was the rebellious Ganga that had been cast down from the heavens as punishment for her irreverence, to be trapped in the locks of Shiva’s hair for eternity.

During Atif’s holidays from school, he remembered that whenever Zainab was over she would bring along a plastic bag full of cassettes, most of them without shells and quite worn out from use. The
ghazals
of Meer, Kabir, Ghalib, Daagh—it was Zainab who first introduced Atif to these. Like wine, it was a taste he would acquire over time. “Just for a little while,” she would suggest to Atif’s mother, holding her fingers bunched up. “Then we can go back to that
filmi
music.”

“
O-pho
, Zainab. But what is the point of hearing this kind of heartbreaking music and hurting yourself?” Khadija would say. “Deliberately why inflict pain?”

And the sinewy voices of the
filmi
playback singers would be put aside so that the more classical voices of Mehdi Hassan, Munni Begum, and Zainab’s favorite, the queen of mystical singing, Abida Parvin, could infuse the air with melancholia. At such moments, Atif would see the life come back in Zainab’s face as she stopped stirring the bubbling pot of lamb curry or folding the linen to cock her head to the side and raise her hand in the air as she felt the music, ignoring the spying of Darya Durbin who hoped to catch a glimpse of something gossip-worthy transpiring in the house from her second story window. So not only did Zainab Aunty admire Abida Parvin but, Atif decided, she also resembled her, and it was easy to think that it was because of this that Zainab related to her music so much.

Jab se tu nai mujhe deevana bana rakhaa hai

Sang har shakhs ne haathon mein uthaa rakhaa hai

Since you’ve bewitched me

Stones have appeared in the hands of men

Patharon, aaj mere sir pe baraste kyun ho?

Mein ne tum ko bhi kabhi apanaa khudaa rakha hai

O cruel stones! Why do you rain down upon me?

At one time, I even worshipped you as my God

Pejaa aiyaam ki talkhi ko bhi hans kai “Nasir”

Gham ko sehnai mein bhi kudarat ne mazaa rakha hai

O’ Nasir, imbibe the sorrow of these forlorn days with laughter

Nature has blessed even grief with a certain pleasure

Zainab was late one morning and Atif’s mother had dashed off to the butcher for cuts of
hallal
meat. He seized the opportunity to plug in Chacha’s latest guilt offering of the
Silsila
soundtrack and used his mother’s most diaphanous
chunni
to complete his transformation. After he had drawn the curtains, censuring Darya Durbin’s view of the bedroom, he twirled against the mirror lip-synching the female parts of “
Dekha ek khwab
.” He didn’t hear the car pull up or the front door open.

From where she stood at the doorframe, Zainab had watched him for at least for a full minute in his full Bollywood regalia before he caught her reflection in the mirror and froze, the
chunni
falling to the floor in a puddle.

They considered each other momentarily. Then Zainab went to the portable cassette player that was by the side of the door and pushed a button to stop the music. Slowly she walked over to Atif and knelt down by him with some difficulty because of the pain in her joints. She picked up the
chunni
and draped it around Atif’s head, throwing the end of it around his neck and over his shoulder beautifully. She rubbed some of the paint off her lips and then ran her finger around his lips. She tucked her hand under his chin and raised his face so that she could look him in the eyes. One corner of her mouth turned up into a slight smile. She seemed to be saying,
Brace up, dear boy. If this is the path you’ll be walking, you’re going to need all the strength you can muster.

“Aunty doesn’t like to miss any part of a show. Shall we start from the beginning? You want I play Amitabh?”

* * *

Where she seemed to suffer around others her own age, Zainab came alive with Atif. The soft sighs evaporated and were replaced by the uproarious laughter that had been consigned to her past and rumor. And where it had been Chacha that Atif had depended on for his excursions to the cinema, it was now Zainab who now became his partner to the Gaiety Cinema. She was only too happy to escape from the daily gossiping in Khadija’s kitchen.

“
Bak, bak, bak, bak,”
she said. “All day they go on. Like bleating goats they are. Just sitting around and spreading malicious gossip about others! One day it’s going to bite them in their fat buttocks!”

Atif’s feelings about having to relinquish Chacha to his aunt underwent a metamorphosis. After the afternoon she discovered him in front of the mirror, they formed a bond, and his resentment melted like an ice-
gola
in the sweltering Bombay sun. Better to lose to someone like Aunty Zainab, who didn’t make him feel wrong for dancing with his mother’s
chunni
and went as far as to participate whenever they could steal a private session at home. Better Aunty Zainab with her coral pink hairpin and flat leather
chappals
than some man-eating siren who would have used his little belly as a cushion for the spike of her heels.

Aunty Zainab was different from every adult person in his life. She noticed him in a more meaningful way than the polite, cutesy way of adults. Beneath her lackluster appearance, there was vibrancy, an undeniable strength that only Atif was privy to. Unlike Chacha who, despite his formidable build, had stood a little distance away from the near-rioting in the canteen during intervals, Zainab clasped his hand like she was preparing him for bigger battles, and charged right into the crowd with gusto that made even Atif nervous.

She bellowed out to vendors:
“Arre, chulo bhai, jaldi karo! Philum shuru hone wala hai! Popcorn ke liye kya saari raat yaha guzarni paregi?”
Hurry up, brother. The film is starting. Will I have to spend the whole night here just to get some popcorn?

When the lights went down again and Bollywood lifted them from the disappointments of their own world, Atif noticed that his aunt would pull out a little silver flask from the pocket of her billowing pants and without missing a beat or taking her eyes of the screen, discreetly pour some of its contents into the chilled bottle of Limca lodged between her legs.

He sensed that Zainab had made an enormous compromise by returning. She had, for reasons unknown, snuffed out whatever dreams had emboldened her to leave in the first place and had capitulated to what was expected of her. The only clue to this other life she had sacrificed—the one nobody ever spoke about, as if by refusing to acknowledge it, it would erase itself—was a photograph that she had shown him.

They were sitting at a curb, the Gateway of India behind them, the two sister Taj Hotels in front of them. People were milling around them—hawkers selling maps and postcards, tourists trying to evade them and take pictures, families and friends enjoying the sunset, and on the street, bullock carts and taxis and cars jousting for the right of way. He was telling her about his best friend Kamal over the relentless pandemonium of car horns and voices, how hurt he was because Kamal was now spending more time with other friends. Girls.

Unlike the purses that Atif’s mother or the other women Atif knew carried, Zainab pulled out a wallet much like the one his father and Chacha owned. In its plastic holder was a faded color photograph of Zainab standing next to a dark, pretty, much younger-looking woman. He looked up at Zainab expectantly.

“You know this is who? This is
my
best friend, Kanta,” she said. “Pretty,
na?
”

Kanta was no Rekha either. But somehow he sensed that this validation was important to his aunt and nodded. He took the weathered brown wallet in his hands and ran his finger over the picture but because the dust was trapped beneath the plastic, he could not wipe it away and it remained time worn, irrecoverable. Kanta was wearing the pink coral hairpin that Zainab now wore. On Kanta it looked much better, more fitting because unlike Zainab, she wore makeup and the pink of the hairpin matched her lipstick. She had long plaited hair and was smiling brightly, the white teeth in dazzling contrast to her dark Southern skin. When he gave the wallet back to his aunt, she closed it gently like a sacred prayer book and tucked it into her side pocket. She took a deep but shaky breath. She looked into the cloudless blue sky, her hand patting the wallet involuntarily, as if trying to pace something, either the souls preserved within the plastic or her own weak heart.

Atif sensed that at that moment, Aunty Zainab might have wanted to cry, so he put his hand over hers.

* * *

When Atif was eighteen and leaving Bombay for America, knowing on some subconscious level that he would never return, family and friends gathered around the taxi that was going to take him, his father and Chacha to the airport.

Of all the people there, including his mother, Darya Durbin wept most hysterically. “What am I to do now!” she wailed, knocking fists to forehead. “Another son I am losing and even that in this old age! Have I not suffered enough already? America steals everything from us!” Then she spat in the mud, narrowly missing Khadija’s feet.

Atif hugged his teary-eyed mother who asked him to write regularly, call every so often. He promised he would eat properly and take good care of himself. His excitement overrode any sadness he felt until he saw Aunty Zainab, who had dyed her hair for the very first time to a shocking jet-black and stood mutely by his mother, her eyes brimming with tears. He noticed that the dye had stained her skin around the temples. He put his arms around her, held her there for a long time. Not one to succumb to perfumes, Aunty Zainab had made an exception and applied some rose attar, and he could smell it commingled with the peroxide as they clung to each other.

By now, Darya Durbin had spread out the front of her sari like a beggar. “How much more? How much more will you take?” she demanded, looking up at invisible gods.

Atif knew that while everyone would miss him, all their lives would return to normal in a matter of time. His father and Chacha would boast and fantasize about his son’s newfound American life, his mother would pour all her affection and nurturing into her father, and Kamal, now a well-built young man who had also come to the party to wish him luck, would occupy himself with yet another smitten girl. Aunty Zainab would be left all alone.

He wanted to say,
I don’t know why you came back, I’ll never understand it, but I’m so glad you did, Zainab Aunty.

She kissed him on both cheeks. “Go now. Go and live for us all.”

Even after Atif had been forbidden from calling home, he did so in the hopes of catching his mother when his father was away at work. Once he had been surprised when his father had answered. He had quickly hung up, his heart pounding. It was only later that Atif realized that his father had been home because it was Eid-ul-Fitr and that he himself hadn’t fasted in years.

As the years passed by, his phone calls ceased and his need for family also faded. His family seemed to exist in another realm and the consolation for this came as the end of his intense need for them. He called occasionally—on his mother’s birthday, when a song reminded him of her—but in time, he began to resist even this. He had hoped to speak to Zainab as well, but he was told she had stopped visiting them almost completely. After he left, she had plummeted into depression. “And after that very terrible fight you had with your father, she won’t speak to either one of us!” his mother said agitatedly. “Imagine! As if I had anything to do with it! Is she
pagal?
Crazy woman refuses to speak with anybody. She just roams around all day and doesn’t tell anybody what she’s doing. I know you two were very close but
Allah-kassam
, her
khopri
is not straight! Never was! ”