Series 1: “Dreams of Lunacy” Part 3 The rich

Zameer opens his door, which is covered with dust, cow dung, and drawings done by a chalk. As he enters his nine-year-old son, Hassan, spots him and runs towards him and holds him tightly. Zameer embraces him with all his love, but not all his strength.

“How have you been, my son?”

“Good.”

“Where’s your mother?”

“She’s gone to get roti’s, she just left.”

He nods his head, and drags a charpoy under the peepal tree, removes his shoes and discharges a long sigh. Hassan watches with wonder, at shiny shoes covered in shiny dust, which only please the owner when they are taken off.

“Are you going to school these days Hassan?”

“No, my ustad hits me without reason, I don’t want to go.”

“I don’t believe that. And even if he does, he is your ustad, he has the right.

I have already paid your fees, you have to go!”

“No, I don’t want to. But I got a pencil from the store across the street and Maa got me a notebook, and I have been making things.”

Zameer smiles,

“Show it to me then.”

Hassan’s smile exceeds his size as he runs inside, and retrieves a torn notebook upon which are many drawings filled with extraordinary amount of shading, abstract figures, all drawn intricately with great precision.

Zameer’s smile disappears,

“Now listen carefully... don’t waste your time on these. It’s a hard world outside. I have had to bow down before the rich bastards all my life, but you do not have to. I want you to be as respectable as them, so people bow down before you.”

“Why?”

“Why, what?”

“Why is bowing so important?”

Zameer laughs, and tries another angle with his verbal slingshot to neatly shatter Hassan’s shell of naivety,

“Son, when one can make people bow in front of them, then they could be made to do anything.”

Hassan stays silent.

“Hassan look, inside humans, there is just one big fat animal, the pig. The rich treat us like wild pigs that need to be tamed and hunted whenever they are in the mood, and the rich themselves are those clean pigs which are always being fed and looked after. They are the ones whose pictures are published in food magazines and newspapers.”

Hassan laughs, and shakes his head at what he thinks is humour,

“I’m telling you, that is how the world is. Better you realise it now, before you are thrown into a ditch and butchered.”

Hassan’s laughter turns into a squeak,

“Why would anyone want to hurt me if I do not do anything to them?”

Zameer smiles, proud that his slingshot has proved effective,

“Because no one gives a f**k about anyone other than themselves, especially the rich. The more money they get, the more isolated they grow from one another. They build more rooms so they do not have to sleep together, they separate their mugs and glasses so no one has to drink from one glass, they separate their perfumes so they can all smell different.”

But now Hassan shifts his gaze towards his father’s moustache and lets the words drop on the ground. At that moment his mother enters, and seeing Zameer stretched out on the charpoy, greets him. Zameer doesn’t respond, and asks,

“Are the roti’s warm?”

“Jee (yes), should I prepare the food?”

“Of course.”

Hassan looks to and fro; something about this conversation unsettles his heart.

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She rested her creased elbows on the windows, feeling the dust scrape her gently, and looked at the transforming canvas of life outside. It was so entertaining, she thought; every variety of human emotion on display. There seemed to be live theatres everywhere, ordinary people living incredible lives.

Maida had this theory she had developed in her childhood. Once, when she was 12, she had overheard a conversation that human beings have more than 70% water in their bodies, and her mind contemplated and concluded that since people around her were emotional for 70% of their lives, then water and emotion must share a relationship. So, she concluded that each emotion was a different coloured liquid inside our body, and each interaction with the world either polluted the liquid or rarely cleaned it. Now, looking out at the world, she increasingly began to see the state of liquids that people possessed.

Initially, she had thought that those with unkempt faces and clothes were likely to keep polluted emotions, and those polished individuals who were extremely careful in where they walked, when they smiled, and who they shook hands with and for how long would have much cleaner liquids inside. But over time, she had learnt that people were unimaginably strange. The clothes and the warmth were a nice mask that effectively covered the state of their liquids; the more the money, the better the mask.

“Stop staring at the f**king world. There is no food for tomorrow, and I have spent what we earned last week on that cosmetic cream,” Sughra exclaimed, as she entered the washroom.

“Ah, now what? I don’t want to dress up today, please.”

“Stop complaining you shit, we’re leaving in 10 minutes.”

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“Why do we have to wear such f**king bright clothes?”

“Because no one would give us a second look if we dressed normally. When will you bloody understand? We need to be noticed, we need to be loud, and once we have their attention, they will give us at least some money, even if it is to get rid of us.”

At the traffic signal, Ghaffar sits comfortably inside his Corolla. Zameer sits on the driving seat, looking hard at the traffic, the signal, any spaces he can manoeuvre the car inside and sometimes at patches of empty space where he sees his ambitions in different forms. Ghaffar’s eyes, however, are held by Maida and Sughra, who are currently having a hard time speaking amidst waves of ridicule and laughter from some youngsters on a bike. As they approach his Corolla, Ghaffar’s heart pauses in its beat, retreating in darkness, and watches closely.

“Sir, look at these characters” Zameer says with a hearty laugh, and opens his mirror,

“What do you want?”

Sughra claps her hands together and with a glowing smile appreciates Zameer’s manly moustache, and the moustache has a hard time keeping still.

“Just some money, babu (mister). God will grant you more. You already have such a big nice car.”

Ghaffar’s heart comes in for a quick beat, before racing away when he catches Maida’s gaze. Zameer looks intently on their dress,

“Why is the other one so quiet? And why are you so loud?”

“She is always like this, not good for our business you know. Acha, give us something at least.”

Ghaffar, with a runaway heart, sifts through his wallet and gives a 100 rupee note to Zameer, and he passes it in Sughra’s parched palm. Zameer closes the window, the traffic begins to flow, Ghaffar’s heart returns and a new seed stretches its legs inside a corner of his mind.

“It was a good thing to give them 100 rupees sir. These people, their prayers are really effective. Once my wife gave them 50 rupees and the next week, there was a dengue outbreak in our community, in which our son was the only one who did not get dengue.”

Ghaffar smiled, and nodded his head. The traffic moved on, but at the next signal, there was an even bigger traffic jam. He looked at his black headphones, twirled around in his closed fist. The horns were increasing in pitch and frequency. So he put on his headphones, and connected the iPod that lay next to him. He shuffled until he reached him. Beethoven… Ah, Sixth Symphony. Just as the first whiff of a sound hit his eardrums, ever so softly, the cries of the world disappeared into oblivion.

Eyes closed, succumbing to pleasure. The heart got up from its chair, ready to act. As the composition progressed, the heart began to sway slowly with the sound of the flute. The tune began to form in the darkness, a sine wave. The heart lifted itself up on top of the tune, just over the crest. There was considerable space up above. Slowly, the tune began to rise and fall with greater and greater intensity. He cared not to hold on to the sides. He was part of the wave. He looked around. Scenes brimming with beauty began to emerge on all sides. As the strings ran in their motion, a long winding road appeared to the left of the wave. Around the cobbled road, the flute’s varied pitch created rows of endless flowers differing in colour, height, smell, shape, and the heart began to expand to absorb what it was witnessing.

Around the flowers, a country side emerged. No humans. Just nature. Endless nature. Endless horizons. Endless beautiful horizons. Endless beautiful horizons that grasped the finite eyes. The infinite playing with the finite.

Part IV of the “Dreams of Lunacy” series will be published on Thursday, September 18, 2014. Stay tuned to see how the story connects!