I was on deputation to the Ministry of Defense at the time, and was living downstairs (in what is now the watermelon). It was a Saturday, Chitra and the girls were out. I was alone at home.
Instinct told me to be more formal than friendly, not to reminisce about the past. So I took her up straightaway, to have a look at the apartment. I showed her around the two rooms—a tiny bedroom and a larger workroom. It was an improvement on her Nizamuddin storeroom for sure, but no comparison to her home of many years in Diplomatic Enclave. She barely looked around before saying she would like to move in as soon as possible.
She walked through the empty rooms and sat at the bay window, looking down at the street below. She seemed enthralled by what she saw, but somehow when I looked out at the same view I didn’t think we were seeing the same things.
She made no attempt at conversation and appeared at ease with the silence. She still wore the same plain silver ring on the middle finger of her right hand. I could see she was having some kind of conversation with herself. Suddenly she became practical.
“May I give you a check? A deposit of some sort?”
I said I was in no hurry, that I would draw up an agreement in the next few days.
She asked if she could smoke. I said of course she could, this was her space now and she could do what she pleased in it. She took out a cigarette and lit it, cupping the flame in her palms like a man.
“Given up beedis?” I asked.
Her smile made the lights come on in the room.
I left her to finish her cigarette, and checked the lights, the fans, the water connections in the kitchen and bathroom. As she stood up to leave, she said, as though she was continuing a conversation we’d been having, “There’s so much data, but no one really wants to know anything, don’t you think?”
I had no idea what she meant. Then she was gone. Then too, her absence filled the apartment, like it does now.
She moved in a day or two later. She had almost no furniture. She did not tell me at the time that she had left Naga and that she intended not just to work, but to actually live upstairs. The rent was deposited straight into my account on the first of every month without fail.
Her arrival in my life, her presence upstairs, unlocked something inside me.
It worries me that I use the past tense.
—
Even a casual glance around the room—at the photographs (numbered, captioned) pinned up on the noticeboards, the little towers of documents stacked neatly on the floor and in labeled cartons and box files, the yellow Post-its stuck on bookshelves, cupboards, doors—tells me that there’s something unsafe here, something best left untouched, turned over to Naga perhaps, or even the police. But can I bring myself to do that? Must I, should I, can I resist this invitation to intimacy, this opportunity to share these confidences?
At the far end of the room there’s a long, thick plank of wood supported on two metal stands that serves as a table. It’s piled with papers, old videotapes, a stack of DVDs. Pinned to the noticeboards, together with the photographs, are notes and sketches. Next to an old desktop computer is a tray full of labels, visiting cards, brochures and letterheads—probably the graphic design work with which she earned (earns, for God’s sake!) her living—the only things in the room that look reassuringly normal. There are printouts of what appear to be several versions of a shampoo label, in various typefaces:
Naturelle Ultra Doux Nourishing Conditioner
With Walnut Oil and Peach Leaf
Naturelle Ultra Doux has combined the nourishing and relaxing virtues of walnut oil and the soothing qualities of peach leaf in a rich detangling cream that melts instantly in your hair.
Results: Very easy to comb. Your hair regains its irresistible softness, without heaviness. Deeply nourished, your hair is perfectly flowing and smooth.
A DEIGHTFUL EXPERIENCE.
“Delightful” is missing an “l” in all the versions. Trust her, at this stage of her life, to be designing misspelled shampoo labels.
What about a shampoo for rapidly disappearing hair?
On the wall just above the computer there are two smallish, framed photographs. One is a picture of a child, maybe four or five years old. Her eyes are closed and her body is wrapped in a shroud. Blood from a wound on her temple has seeped through the white cloth, a rose-shaped stain. She’s laid out on the snow. A pair of hands pillows her head, lifting it slightly. Along the top edge of the photograph is a row of feet, clad in all manner of winter shoes. It occurs to me that the child could be Musa’s daughter. What an odd photograph to choose to frame and hang on your wall.
The other photograph is less distressing. It’s been taken on the porch of a houseboat. One of the smaller, shabbier ones. You can see the lake dotted with a few shikaras in the background and the mountains beyond. It’s a picture of an unusually short, bearded young man in a worn, brown Kashmiri pheran. His big head is disproportionate to the size of the rest of his body. He has a bunch of tiny wild flowers tucked behind each ear. He’s laughing, his green eyes sparkle and his teeth are crooked. Something about the unguardedness, the sheer abandon of his smile, makes him look like a child. Crouching in the bowl of his large hands are two tiny kittens, one has a smoky gray coat streaked with black, and the other is a harlequin, with a black eyepatch. He’s holding them out, as though he’s offering them to the photographer to touch or stroke. The kittens are peering over the barricade of his thick fingers, their liquid eyes alert and apprehensive.
Who could he be? I have no idea.
I pick up a fat green file from a pile of files on the table and open it at a random page. Two photographs are glued on to a sheet of paper. In the first one, a blurred, out-of-focus cyclist rides past a barred metal doorway set in a six-or seven-foot-high pink boundary wall, the entrance to what looks like a public men’s toilet. It is located in a crowded neighborhood and is surrounded by one-and two-storeyed brick buildings with balconies. There’s an advertisement for “Roxy Photocopier” painted directly on to the wall in large green letters. The second photograph has been taken inside the toilet. The weathered pink walls are streaked with moss and moisture and have rusty pipes running along them, horizontally as well as vertically. There is a grimy white sink on the wall, and a row of three uncovered manholes in the concrete floor. Metal covers with handles, like the lids of enormous saucepans, lie next to them. An old, broken window frame and a plank of wood are propped up on one wall. They are the most unexceptional photographs I have ever seen. Who has taken them? Why would anybody take pictures like that? And why would anybody file them away so carefully?
The next page explains it:
GHAFOOR’S STORY