Le Gayi Pavan Ura
The Wind Carried It All Away
by Ikramullah
Translated from Urdu by Moazzam Sheikh
Grrr . . . grrrr . . . the trams, the traffic deafening the ear, buses stuffed to the seams slog ahead, motor rikshas buzz around in every direction, sidewalks covered with people, everyone's headed somewhere, calm, hurried. Passing cars through jagged lightning bolts slicing people's faces. Back front, left right, blue, yellow, green and pink neon signs flash. Some so huge they throttle the senses each time they wink at you. Throngs of people press themselves in and out of shops. Yet the streetlights calmly stare down and distribute the light evenly along the stretch. Where does the light go after flooding the road? Someone has to create a never ending procession to keep the road glittering. The moment someone at the head office cuts off the reinforcement, all will be darkness. Is there nothing left of the used light? The road refracts it, sending one half to the atmosphere, the other half to my eyes. The rays which offer the road's image to my eyes, where do they go? Do they die after piercing my eyes? Ah, so my eyes are the light's grave! The petite, feeble beams carve out a path as they struggle against the dark. But dark . . . the darkness, it keeps on growing. Tired, the ill-fated beams eventually breathe their last in the deep bosom of darkness. I used to think radiance was forever. It turned out to be weak, weary and erasable like me. So, only death and darkness are immortal. Death . . . oh yes! I am dying. Today, I don't even seem to have enough strength to make it to the doctor. I should have hired a motor riksha. Why don't you take it now! Ah, well, leave it, leave it. I have covered most of the distance; what's the use now! Why does the doctor not tell me what's wrong with me? Every time he sends me home he consoles me with a lie or two. There is no fever, no fits of cough, just a melting inside and my color is turning paler and paler. The left side too has been feeling stiff and heavy for a few days now. Age is not the factor, for I am hardly forty, forty-two. Perhaps this city's strange dirt is my destiny. It makes such a grinding noise once you step on it, I feel suffocated - as if my mouth is stuffed and I am chewing grit. See how yellow it is, stricken with jaundice! Some people say it's golden. Everyone thinks differently. The color of the soil in my country is light silver; just one touch and it blossoms. A lovely fragrance would rise and leap to your nostrils. What kind of a city is this whose soil has no fragrance, just dull color and taste. Now that I am walking under death's shadow I want only the soil of my birth. See how superstitious I become! It's got to be a minor illness that can be cured in few days, I know it is. Screech! A car has stopped. Are you blind? You could've died. Someone grabs me by the collar and pulls me to the sidewalk. Oh, okay. I didn't see the red light. I am sweating. Breath quickens. Let's take a look at the papers pressed under my arm. There is an X-ray, a report of the urine test. Where is the blood report? Did I drop it? I left it at home maybe. No, it is here in my pants' pocket. Thanks a lot. All is well. The light turns green.
The clinic: white door, milk white glass, interior a flood of illumination. A few sad faces would be waiting, hiding sorrow in their painful bodies. Occasionally a feeble cry, a lisp, the miniscule, inconsequential waves would crawl up the wall to huddle next to the ceiling. No, the speedy fan would force the sound waves - colliding with the walls, banging their heads at our feet - to scatter forever till they win eternal freedom from the cycle of life and death, rising, vanishing in the sound museum, which collects every sound that has ever been produced. Perhaps the air from the fan has no impact on these waves. How many sounds can there be carrying the cross of one's entire past? Perhaps a lot, but still, how many? We still have not invented means to take stock of the ways we express our feelings and ideas. Much of it is for sure nothing but madness, sheer craziness. The rest has to be sobs, sighs, and pleadings. A few laughs; a crude point of view; tools for self deception; thunders from a cannon fire, but not the bodies shredded to bits. The chants of invaders, but not the victims' heads displayed atop spears. The sound museum too reveals incomplete history of human emotions with missing accounts of smiles and tears - our best means to express ourselves. Better to wipe my sweat as I approach the stairs and take a breath, not nice to go inside in my current mess. What will people say!
Four persons are seated. My arrival has ransacked the fabric of their thoughts. They take one look at me and dive back. Soon she will appear in a black skirt. Her balanced, dark legs will be visible to her knees. Her knee caps, sunk in layers of tender flesh, are made of rubber. No sharp angle there, just pure roundness. One cannot detect the bone as it enters the flesh. Lack of interest and concern will drip from her well-rehearsed politeness. Are you dying? . . . please, by all means . . . what is it to me. She struts in her high heels proudly - as though the clinic survives on her efforts alone - and if the doctor kicked her out before she could even sit down, she won't know how to control her tears. Here, she comes. She smells the incoming patient.
"Your name, please."
"Masud Ahmed."
She writes down the name.
"Is this your first time?"
"No."
"Then give me your old chit." She takes it from him. Wait here and you will be called." She looks out to the street after opening the door. She lowers her voice and calls:
"Peter, Peter. Are you getting bored?"
"Oh, no. No, no."
Bzzzzzzzzz! Writhing, she turns. Smile meant for Peter has not vanished yet. Its diminishing ruin is still visible. She beckons to one patient: Your turn, go inside. A chubby woman, her body a mass of pale dangling flab, seated ahead of me, burps. Her huge, wilted breasts rest on her belly. Caught behind the glasses, her swollen eyes - like that of a turtle's - pierce the room with utter disenchantment. Must be the wife of a businessman! The dumbwitted women in my country were just like her. All decked up in the evening, they used to wander around in the Victoria. I have never seen any expression on their blank faces - bereft of feeling. Nothing could hold their attention. A ruckus by the sidewalk, a capricious soul humming a tune, swaying flowers, laughing children, trees in ecstasy, stretches of lush grass would come to nothing. Reaching the Cold Well, the emaciated horse yoked to the Victoria would wag its tail, panting, bowing, and the old coachman would wade his way through the crowd to fetch potatoes and puris to place them before the dumbwit and hurry again to get water. They would finish eating to only stare into the atmosphere with their swollen turtle eyes caged behind the spectacle and then quietly huddle back into the Victoria to end up once again in an obscure corner of a mansion while burping sourly. Affluence had the same effect on their brain as iron shoes had on some Chinese women. I left my country on the other side of the border; the women, too, I left there. I gave up my home to save myself from them. Mother, father, sister and brother, I left their bodies and reached here just with their souls. How was it possible that the same dumbwitted women have cropped up here along with their sour burps! It would have been so lovely if I could bring Kamni with me. She wasn't dumb. When divided among eight persons, how much was hers that she could ever be considered a well-off woman. Her father made barely eighty rupees a month recording hospital supplies in various registers. How radiant were Kamni's brown eyes, how bright! Like the image of a tomorrow in every mind. There were other quarters next to hers, wall to wall. In the front was the burr tree, a tree so huge that even during the scorching heat and blinding afternoons a life-soothing, serene haze hovered under the dome of huge green leaves. Sitting on the dais built around its trunk, Kamni would be sitting - embraced by a cotton shawl - peeling melon seeds. Stretched hands of naked children from the quarters would crowd her. Seed peeling is a life-threatening chore. She would go on peeling them and place them on empty palms. Krishan, you go blow your nose if you want a seed. Munnay, who drew this dirt map on your face? Go wash. Have patience, Tallu; it's not your turn yet. Razia, when should we get your doll married? Tomorrow? Yes, that's it, we'll cook rice.
"I'll eat all the rice."
"No, Raja, just your share; we'll divide equally."
What is a seed's worth, really! The empty palm would be back again. Oh God, were you here Kamni, I would go on stretching my empty hand before you even if you did not spare a single seed. But how could she have come with me when she had died before the freedom's dawn?