Publisher: Speaking Tiger
Year of publication: 2024
***
Without warning, Mahmud’s three sisters Maryam, Mumtaz and Muskaan landed up at his door early one morning just as he was about to leave for college. The visit was a follow-up to Mahmud’s chance meeting with Maryam at Ahmedabad railway station on his way back from Somnath: the sisters were here to collect their share of gold. It was Ayaz who opened the door when the doorbell rang.
Ayaz recognized Maryam. He stepped aside and made way for the ladies who, ignoring him, walked inside, leaving their slippers at the door. All of them were dressed in shararas.
‘Assalamualaikum bhaijaan,’ they greeted Mahmud, almost in unison.
‘Mualaikumsalam,’ Mahmud returned the greeting, not surprised by their visit, but amazed that they had popped in without phoning. Out of politeness, Mahmud asked after their husbands and children, asked why they had not also come.
Maryam gave Ayaz a sidelong look. ‘Your friend, na?’ she asked her brother curiously. ‘Or is he your servant? He lives with you? What is his religion?’
‘Well, Man Friday is more like it,’ Mahmud replied. ‘He’s a Mahar by birth but he has converted to Islam.’
Ayaz served the brother and sisters tea.
They got to brass tacks. ‘Shall we divide the gold now?’ Maryam asked.
‘Okay,’ said Mahmud, going to the cupboard where the gold was kept. Ayaz hung around.
‘Wait a minute,’ Maryam said. ‘This is a family affair. We can’t do this with a stranger in the house. Why don’t you send your friend or servant or whoever he is away for some time?’
Ayaz got the hint and withdrew into the kitchen. Mahmud went after him, gave him some money, and sent him on an errand.
The gold basically consisted of 14 and 24 carat jewellery: necklaces, earrings, bangles, bracelets, nose pins. It did not add up to much, and after distribution each sibling got no more than a few pieces.
As Ayaz descended the stairs on his way to the market, he felt a twinge of regret. The gold that was being divided in the flat upstairs would have all been his, if only he hadn’t been caught. He would have sold it to a jeweller and made a small fortune.
A dispute arose between Mahmud and his sisters over an ornate diamond necklace embedded with pearls and rubies. It was by far the most expensive ornament in the house, and Maryam was of the view that they should sell it and divide the money amongst themselves.
‘But this does not belong to Ammi,’ Mahmud protested. ‘Zohra brought it as dowry. So the three of you have no claims over it.’
The sisters weren’t convinced by their brother’s argument. Mumtaz, quiet till now, spoke.
‘Bhaijaan, I clearly remember going with Ammi to the jeweller to buy this necklace,’ she said. ‘It is Ammi’s necklace, not your wife’s.’
‘That’s not true,’ Mahmud countered. ‘It’s Zohra’s. I am one hundred percent sure.’
The quarrel could not be resolved as there was no receipt that bore the necklace’s date of purchase. Finally, Maryam arbitrated.
‘We’ll leave the necklace here for now,’ she said, ‘and decide about it later. As of now, it belongs to all of us and none of us.’
The sisters put their gold in their respective handbags and went to the living-room window.
‘The view from here is completely obstructed by this bridge,’ lamented Muskaan.
She was referring to the JJ flyover that ran all the way from the JJ School of Art in the south to JJ Hospital in the north, blocking the view of the main road which they had had as small children, before the flyover was built.
‘Not only is the view gone,’ said Mahmud, ‘but hooligans, who walk on the flyover at night, although it is prohibited, peep into our houses. And the exhaust fumes of vehicles that drive on the flyover twenty-four hours a day ensure that we breathe toxic air. Still, it’s a nice house and I don’t want to leave it.’
‘It bears the memory of our parents,’ Maryam said. ‘You should never leave it.’
Ayaz returned home with the shopping. But he wasn’t alone. There was a noisy brawl at the door and when Mahmud went to look, he found that Ayaz’s pimp, Sakharam, had followed him to the flat in a state of drunkenness. Ayaz was raining blows on him and the man was on all fours, bawling.
‘What does he want now?’ Mahmud asked, embarrassed by the scene at the door in the presence of his sisters.
‘Money, what else,’ Ayaz said angrily.
Ayaz kicked his uncle in the shins till he went tumbling down the stairs. Then Ayaz ran after him, bodily lifted him, carried him down the stairs, and threw him out of the building on to the pavement. The man rose and walked away, drooling.
‘What’s going on, bhaijaan?’ Maryam asked her kid brother. She scolded him for living a wayward life.
‘I agree fate has been unkind to you,’ Maryam continued. ‘But take hold of your life. How long are you going to live like a vagabond? It’s about time you settled down.’
Mumtaz and Muskaan concurred with Maryam. ‘Yes, bhaijaan,’ they said. ‘You should settle down.’
Ayaz came back upstairs. His shirt was torn in the scuffle and blood oozed from the corner of his mouth. He went to the bathroom to wash his face. Mahmud was afraid Maryam would lash out at him.
To distract his sisters, whom he began to see as she-devils, Mahmud ordered lunch from Alaa’s. Alaa brought it upstairs himself. The siblings squatted on the kitchen floor and hungrily dug into the liver biryani and brain curry from a common plate. But when Mahmud motioned Ayaz to join them, Maryam objected.
‘He’s a Hindu untouchable,’ Maryam said. ‘He can’t eat with us.’
‘He’s a Muslim now,’ Mahmud corrected his sister.
‘Only you know that. To the world, he’s still a Hindu untouchable.’
There was much rancour between Mahmud and Ayaz when the sisters left. Each accused the other’s kin of humiliation. Mahmud wondered why Ayaz’s uncle landed up at their door after being paid money, and that too when he had guests. In turn, Ayaz accused Mahmud’s sisters of casteism. ‘They called me an untouchable,’ he protested.
‘I apologize on their behalf,’ Mahmud said. ‘They had no right to call you an untouchable.’
Between their respective kin, of course, they faced a graver danger from Ayaz’s uncle. He was a drunkard, lived close by, and was perpetually in need of cash. Mahmud’s sisters, on the other hand, lived in other cities, and it was unlikely they would return to Ajmal Mansion now that they had got their gold.
‘The next time the bastard comes here,’ Mahmud told Ayaz, referring to his uncle, ‘I am going to report him to the police. Thank God I took that letter from him saying he had been paid twenty-five thousand bucks.’
—
Though Mahmud had paid the clerk in the PhD Unit a bribe, he had sleepless nights worrying whether his thesis would really be dispatched to his examiners, or simply be dumped in a corner of the PhD Unit and forgotten. He knew of candidates whose results had taken years to be declared. But his fears were unfounded. Scarcely two months after he had submitted his thesis, his reports arrived and both were positive. Mahmud’s guide, Dr Khan, was part of a Quid Pro Quo Club that accepted each other’s students’ theses regardless of their quality, held viva-voce examinations, and declared results in record time. Each of them was thus able to say in his curriculum vitae that he had successfully guided that many doctoral students, the number usually being upwards of one hundred. Of course, this is not to say that Mahmud’s research lacked in quality. He was a motivated student. The fact that he’d worked on Mahmud of Ghazni, a man he admired, contributed to his motivation in no small measure.
The referee who came for Mahmud’s viva, Dr Pathan, taught at Marathwada University, Aurangabad. It was a closed-door viva, with just Dr Pathan, Dr Khan and Mahmud present in the classroom. After Mahmud made his presentation, Dr Pathan asked him why he had chosen to work on Mahmud of Ghazni.
‘He was a great Muslim,’ Mahmud replied. ‘He did to casteist Hindus what they had been doing to Adivasis and Buddhists for centuries. Naturally he was demonized. In his day, Mahmud of Ghazni was demonized in India exactly as we demonize Dawood Ibrahim, Haji Mastan, Abu Salem, Chota Shakeel, Afzal Guru, Masood Azhar and so many others. In my view, this so-called secular India needs people like that. How long must we tolerate Hindu hegemony and tyranny?’
Dr Pathan was struck by Mahmud’s outspokenness, even if he associated it with immaturity and suicidal hot-headedness. But he found himself admiring the young man’s guts. He declared Mahmud to have passed.
‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘You are now Dr Mahmud.’
Dr Khan congratulated Mahmud too. The trio went to the canteen for coffee. Here they were joined by the corrupt PhD Unit clerk who smirked and told Mahmud that had it not been for him, he would never have got his doctorate.
When Mahmud got home and gave Ayaz the good news, the latter hugged him. That night in bed, setting aside all his squeamishness, Ayaz inserted his tongue deep into Mahmud’s mouth, licked the insides of his cheeks and bit his lips till they bled. Their tongues wrestled while their lips stayed glued as if smeared with Fevicol. Ayaz emptied a sachet of gutkha into his mouth, chewed, and then transferred the juice in his mouth into Mahmud’s, as if he were a love bird impregnating its mate. It turned out to be a marathon kissing session that extended to the wee hours, their foul breath not deterring them.
