Spiral Road (2 page)

Recently, we’d been arguing over travel plans. We intended to go overseas together. Turkey, Syria and Jordan, I suggested.

Italy and France, she insisted.

And then, after not hearing from my brother for more than a year, I received a lengthy email from him, advising me about our father’s failing health and the ongoing saga of Uncle Musa’s profligacy. Zia was worried. Abba was struggling to recognise people and his speech had deteriorated to such an extent that it was difficult to understand what he meant. There were times when he was unexpectedly articulate and precise about the past. Such moments were followed by periods of silence, as Abba returned to the confusion of the present.

‘Bangladesh?’ Amelia sounded dubious.

‘It’s one of the safest of the Islamic countries,’ I said light-heartedly. ‘If you prefer, we could meet somewhere else. Istanbul or Amman?’

To my relief, Amelia pulled out altogether. I would have had an impossible time explaining her to Ma.

Our honour was in danger of being tarnished again, Zia had warned in his email, like a stuffy guardian of familial values. Then he concluded, officiously, intervention is necessary.

T
HERE’S A HAUNTING
tale about the oldest item in our family jewellery collection. A twenty-two carat gold armlet, studded with a hundred tear-shaped rubies,
had been presented to my great-grandmother Hasina by Abdul Ghani, the then Nawab of Dhaka.

Abdul Ghani first glimpsed Hasina at a wedding at Ahsan Manzil, that palatial building on the banks of the Buriganga River. It was customary for the impulsive Nawab to peek into the great hall where female guests gathered on formal occasions. He was a curious man and an aesthete—a lover and patron of North Indian classical music and painting. He was known to be a poet of some merit, dedicating his verses to those women he found attractive. A harmless idiosyncrasy, one could say. But not in Hasina’s case. Befitting her name, my greatgrandmother was renowned for her beauty.

An aide informed the Nawab that Hasina was married, to a
zamindar
’s son, and had already borne him four children. At the time she was only twenty-one. So it was in despair that the Nawab sent her the armlet as a gift. It was accompanied by an explanatory note: each ruby, he said, was intended to represent a bloodied tear he’d shed over his unrequited love for her.

‘Begum
Hasina, I beg you not to lose the armlet or give it away
,’ the Nawab wrote. ‘
Keep it close to you as a token of my love. I’ve asked a holy man to bless it.
’

Ismael Alam was infuriated by the Nawab’s behaviour and sought to confront him and return the armlet. But Hasina was so moved by the aristocrat’s gesture that she insisted on keeping the present and writing to her admirer. My great-grandmother was a wilful woman, prone to bouts of temper. She resisted Ismael Alam’s
instruction to stop all communication with the Nawab. Hasina raged, abused anyone who dared to enter her room, smashed furniture and set a part of the house on fire. She went on a hunger strike until her husband withdrew his demand. With great reluctance and growing anger, Ismael Alam acquiesced, but insisted that his wife deposit the armlet in the family’s safe, which stood in a corner of his room. In return, my greatgrandfather showered her with jewellery of inestimable value. Still Hasina sulked. She then moved to a small room in a corner of the house and refused to see her husband.

A month later, during the peak of the monsoon rains, Hasina went missing. A hundred men were employed to search for her. All they could find was her pair of leather sandals floating in the Buriganga.

Inevitably, conjectures followed about an ill-fated affair between the Nawab and the wife of the
zamindar
. But the Alams remained tight-lipped and maintained their composure. In the end they announced that Hasina had committed suicide after being diagnosed with an incurable disease.

My great-grandfather wept and grieved in public. He fasted, fed the poor, donated money to the local mosque and prayed over long hours. Some reluctantly concluded that his death from a broken heart was imminent. Yet Ismael Alam went on to live for another fifty years, marrying for a second time, studying the Koran and setting up an orphanage.

When he was finally near death, he cried for Hasina’s forgiveness and prayed for the Devil to keep away. He hallucinated about snake attacks, and sank his canines into his arms in several places. He wanted to shed his skin and become a new person, he cried out in his sleep. Allah was beneficent and merciful…Ismael Alam kept mumbling incriminating words of guilt and contrition until he passed away.

Izzat.
Family honour. It’s a priceless virtue in our family.

My father told us this story late one afternoon during Ramadan as we sat on the terrace of our house, waiting for the siren to sound the end of fasting for the day.

‘And the armlet?’ I asked. ‘What happened to it?’

‘It was in my father’s possession for some years,’ Abba explained. ‘I thought he then gave it to my brother. But Musa Bhai denies that he ever received it.’

‘So, it just vanished!’ Zia exclaimed.

‘Just as well,’ Abba said indifferently.

We allowed the gathering dusk to hide us in its silence. Neither Zia nor I were inclined to ask the obvious and probe further into Hasina’s fate.

Never again did Hasina Alam figure in our conversations. It was as if, by some tacit agreement, we had banished her from our minds.

I
TAKE THE
printout from my backpack and reread the part relating to my father’s brother:

Walnut’s behaviour has become even more outrageous. He’s a source of constant embarrassment to us all. Living in the ancestral village, he continues as if still in the days of
zamindari
rule. He’s secretive and stays in that hideous house he’s built for himself in Manikpur. Incidentally, he had no hesitation about stripping the remains of our old family house and using most of its bricks for building his new place. He’s looked after by that cunning fellow Nur, and other sycophants who gladly tell him whatever he wishes to hear.

I now feel it was a mistake to convince him to leave the city, to rid him of his addiction to gambling. He should move back to Dhaka where we can keep an eye on him. The problem is that he doesn’t want to talk to me after the arguments we’ve had over the past few months. Recently I brought up the matter of the black pearls. He accused me of being impertinent and ranted about his right to dispose off his share of the family jewellery as he pleased. He still claims to know nothing about the other 200 pearls that went missing all those years ago. Other items of inherited jewellery, supposedly in his safekeeping, are unaccounted for. He pretends that they were never passed on to him.

Should you decide to come, I’d like you to visit him. You may have greater influence on the old man. He likes you because you’ve humoured him and given in to his whims. Coming from you, he’s likely to listen to the advantages of living near proper medical facilities. Even a whiff of prolonging his life is likely to tempt him to leave
his serfdom. His latest plan is utterly disgraceful! It has upset Ma no end. It could be every bit as humiliating as that other business, years ago, which led to his injury. Do you remember how the matter had to be silenced? It sounds unkind, but I wish that he had been permanently debilitated in that fall. It would have removed the source of his greatest temptation in life.

It’s typical of my brother to leave me guessing about the exact nature of this next potential scandal. Whatever the octogenarian is planning has evidently rattled everyone. I’m sad about the pearls, not for their monetary value but for their significance in locating the coordinates of our family’s history. But then we’ve been known to be careless about looking after our assets.
Allah gives and He takes
has been our fatalistic motto. The acceptance of human helplessness in controlling the fortunes of life has brilliantly hidden our failures.

As for Uncle Musa’s accident, which Zia mentioned in his email, I recall the incident that had sparked that family scandal. A careless romp with a village girl in a paddy field on his forty-ninth birthday had led to her pregnancy. Her father had the courage to create a fuss about his daughter’s condition. He threatened to publicly name the culprit. The affair was hushed up after Uncle Musa agreed to give land and a large sum of money to the outraged farmer. The girl was whisked away to another village where she had a stillborn baby. Within weeks she was married off to the local school teacher who was nearly thrice her age.

Several months later, Uncle Musa was being transported on a palanquin to a neighbouring landowner when a servant buckled under the weight of one of the poles he was shouldering. The imbalanced litter crashed to the ground. Uncle Musa managed to climb out of the wreck and hobble away. But the fall injured a delicate part of his body adjacent to his pendulous anatomy and incapacitated him so severely that he was unable to pursue any further conquest in the village for several years. Someone coined the nickname Crushed Walnuts, and Uncle Musa had to bear the humiliation of being teased about his smashed manhood by those who knew him well.

Weeks later it became known that an aggrieved brother of the girl was the palanquin bearer who had caused the accident.

I WATCH A gecko snare a fly on the wall. A retinue of black ants crawls into a small hole in a corner of the room. I hear voices outside. An argument flares. Then a hostile silence. Clicking heels.

The customs woman enters the room. She’s visibly agitated. ‘Mr Alam! There’s been a terrible mistake! Please accept our apology. We didn’t know you were a freedom fighter in our liberation war against Pakistan. You’re a war hero!’

I glower at her.

She returns my passport. ‘So sorry! You can go.’

This sudden elevation in my rank is hardly flattering. I’ve never thought that I was any kind of a hero. But then people have funny notions about valour. Once I was among those classified as freedom fighters.
Terrorist
to some…
insurgent
to others.
Miscreant
to the Pakistani soldiers. I was nicknamed
Explosive
and even made it to the top ten on the army’s MOST WANTED list.

I collect my luggage and walk out to the terminal hall, which is teeming with armed security guards.

I brace myself for home, and all impending attention. My mother will probably lead the charge with inquisitorial enthusiasm. I have no doubts that there will be probes into my personal life, revolving around my unacceptable bachelor status. My future intentions. A pointed reminder of the diminishing numbers in our family. Responsibilities.

He leans against a pillar, checking the time on his watch. The aura of haughty aloofness hasn’t deserted my brother. But the emblems of success are no longer apparent.

The Armani jacket and designer jeans have given way to a long cotton
kameez
and matching white
shalwar.
A pair of Bata sandals has replaced Sergio Rossi shoes. He wears a skullcap and sports a short and well-groomed beard. I consider greeting him as Mullah Zia, but that may be inappropriate, considering what I remember about his professed allergy to the preaching of clerics.

My older brother has aged considerably in the twelve years since I last saw him. He’s overweight, although the loose
kameez
manages to create a toned-down impression
of his girth. There are brown splotches, like splattered mud, on his face and neck. His skin resembles crinkled paper.

He frowns when he sees me and then smiles. ‘You’re beginning to look your age! What happened to that head of hair?’

We shake hands and embrace.

‘That’s a change!’ I point to his skullcap. ‘Not exactly an executive’s ideal.’

‘A matter of asserting my identity,’ Zia says forcefully.

‘Wish I could be as certain as you about mine,’ I mumble.

‘In a foreign country?’ he asks incredulously.

‘I live there!’ I say sharply, looking around me. ‘But then, no matter where I am, it’s a foreign land.’

‘Your British Council library card number in your final year at school?’ he demands suddenly.

‘What?’

‘My A-level candidature number for the final exam? Our joint account number at Habib Bank? Or has age weakened that exceptional memory?’ he teases.

‘I could make them up!’

‘Then I’ll know you’re wrong. I came across one of our old school magazines the other day. I’d written down all kinds of things on the inside cover.’

‘I don’t forget numbers.’ He stops grinning when I reel off the numbers. Accurately.

It was nearly fifteen years ago that Zia ended his career as a specialist in parasitic diseases to accept a lucrative job
as the regional boss of a multinational drugs company. His position and financial status have enabled him to maintain his imperial bearing, although the wider family’s fortune is somewhat depleted.

Zia has always acted as though it’s his inherited right to be recognised and treated with respect as a wealthy and influential person. He was always more accomplished than I was at most things, I hate to admit. His academic ability was a source of constant friction between us. And he could flatter the girls with the charm of a polished liar. My brother was witty and made them laugh with stories he spun about his rivalry with me. We competed fiercely for places in the college’s cricket team. Zia was a more talented athlete than I was and went on to lead the side with considerable success. He was a clever debater, too, and a champion chess player. Then, when the A-level results were announced, he was declared the dux of his year.

Zia has accepted his achievements without humility or surprise. In Zia’s mind, his talent and versatility are compatible with the blessing of being born in a privileged ménage.

W
E BELONG TO
the
zamindari
tradition, Zia would remind me dutifully, with the authority of the older brother. ‘We have a responsibility to maintain the image of respectability in order to justify our prerogatives. Our public behaviour must characterise us as an exemplary
family.’ There was serious display of piety during Friday prayers at the local mosque, sanctimonious words and exaggerated humility, as we went out of our way to talk to the more humble citizens in the community. Our charity during Ramadan was legendary. Beggars flocked to the front gate of the house for
Iftar
and never left without food. We donated generously to orphanages.
Eid-ul-Fitr
and
Eid-ul-Azha
were celebrated with pomp and carefree wastefulness.

Although the Alams eventually moved to Dhaka, our ancestral ties with Manikpur were not weakened. We continued to be the rural lawmakers, the dispensers of justice and the upholders of the five primary tenets of Islam. How we acted behind the façade of decorum and righteousness was entirely our concern. If excesses and scandals were not exactly condoned, they were tolerated, even today, with stoical silence. Good breeding demanded understanding and acceptance of straying family members, and it was common for the proverbial black sheep (and there have been quite a few over the years in various shades of darkness) to be penned in a distant city until a safe and unobtrusive return was judged to be desirable.

We Alams were landowners with a rich cultural background and a way of life that distinguished us from the graceless
nouveaux riches
, whose only claim to recognition was the tasteless vulgarity their money could buy. The elders in our family were constipated in their acknowledgement of the political and social realities of
the subcontinent after partition. I remember, it was as though we were determined to live in a world crowded with yesterdays, fortified by the belief that divinity had granted us immunity against change.

‘Anyone who has to work every day to make a living is an insult to
zamindars
,’ Uncle Musa had scornfully declared when Zia and I entered university. ‘We learn from life and from each other. Not from books!’ He had never forgiven Abba for abandoning a life of indolent luxury for the sake of practising medicine.

Even after we were relegated to the ranks of commoners by the political upheavals in the subcontinent, we retained a supercilious pride about the generosity of our family. We’d rather go broke, pretending to be rich and charitable, than demonstrate any signs of niggardliness. As far back as I can recall, we were regularly selling off assets to pay our debts. Banks were our greatest enemies, and no creditor could claim to have had a legitimate birth. The Alams developed the ploy of pretence to the extent of painless self-deception. There were, of course, the traitorous oddities like my father and his younger son, who regularly let down the defences of feudalistic hierarchy: both of us were the subjects of much derision for expressing alarming egalitarian views that were entirely against the family’s interests.

The Alams were eventually dragged into the postpartition world of nationalistic fervour, transitional chaos and lost privileges. We would have much preferred to continue dealing with the Raj, rather than with the native upstarts who then whittled away our benefits and selfindulgent
way of living with a vengeful haste. The British had tacitly approved of our ruling-class mentality, respected our musty elegance, ignored our excesses and treated us courteously. In return, we had obliged by inadvertently grafting ourselves to the services of the imperial bureaucracy. The Alams had been among the de facto administrators of rural India, highly effective in establishing a dictatorial order in the countryside without being a financial imposition on the white sahibs.

August 1947 was an ill-fated month for us.

T
HE GULF OF
a lengthy separation is too expansive to cross immediately. Beyond the facetious, now Zia and I flounder for words. We resort to trivia—the crowd, the noise and the oppressive weather. Nothing that’s unusual in this part of the world. I’m nervous about the presence of the large number of security guards.

A bomb was recently detonated inside one of the side gates of the airport, Zia informs me casually. ‘The guards arrive in truckloads every day after dawn, and by sunset most of them have disappeared, as if safety’s been ensured until the next morning.’

‘What happens at night?’

‘So far nothing’s happened. But it’s potentially the prime time for mischief.’

I inquire about Abba’s health.

‘He’s deteriorating rapidly,’ Zia says ruefully. ‘Alzheimer’s is a cruel disease.’

Outside, it’s muggy. The monsoon rains can only be a few weeks away.

Zia helps me with the luggage and we battle our way past a gang of ragged-looking boys, who tug at our clothes and offer discount rates for carrying my suitcase. We’re peppered with hard-luck stories. If it wasn’t for Zia’s firmness, I might weaken and succumb to the guilt that beggar children can adroitly evoke. I wonder how long it will take me this time to adjust to the broken people I see around me.

Waving a bamboo stick, a policeman lumbers towards a white woman. She stands petrified among a group of clamouring beggars with their arms extended towards her. She cringes and clutches her handbag to her chest, a bewildered smile plastered on her face. Behind us, a youngster swears and spits at our feet. His companions roar with approval, and move on towards the hapless tourist with predatory zeal.

Zia leads the way to his car—a new Honda Civic with tinted windows, alloy wheels, CD player, AC and leather seats. A man, squatting on the ground, jumps to his feet. Hastily he puts his right hand behind his back and drops the butt of a cigarette on the ground. He bows obsequiously as Zia pays him.

‘You’ve to be careful,’ Zia explains as if I’m new to the subcontinent. ‘Just for the hell of it, someone’s likely to damage the car.’ He brushes away a spot of dirt from the shiny bonnet.

As we drive out of the airport precinct, he curses and honks repeatedly. ‘It’s the driver’s day off today,’ he
mutters. ‘It’s impossible to get anyone to work for the entire week, regardless of how much you offer to pay them.’

‘The limitations of money,’ I chuckle.

A stream of vehicles flows past. Zia waits irritably with the right indicator of the car blinking. I brace myself for a collision as he loses patience and cuts across the path of a bus, bulging on the sides with passengers, speeding towards us. A horn blares. Zia responds belatedly. The bus horn is much more robust. In this exchange of sounds lies the tension of inequality and simmering anger of most of the population.

‘You should get your horn adjusted to be more vigorous,’ I remark, jokingly.

To my surprise, he nods. ‘They don’t make car horns especially for developing countries. They sound timid and don’t quite fit with the loud rhythm of life here.’

I begin to ask after the family, but I’m careful to avoid any mention of Zeenat. My sister-in-law died of breast cancer six years ago. I’ve always regretted not attending her funeral. It was unavoidable. At the time, I was in hospital with pneumonia.

Zia has had to cope with the demands of the extended family by himself. Soon after he became a widower, our parents moved in with him. Poor planning, rash investments, extravagant living, old age and illness made the change imperative. Besides, Ma held the view that it was the duty of sons to invite their parents to live with them.

In our teens Zia and I had been obliged to listen to the story of her three brothers fighting over the privilege of who would accommodate their parents. Ma ensured that Abba was not present when we were subjected to this narration of filial devotion. She had once made the mistake of recounting the tale in front of him. Abba had smiled and said mildly, ‘I remember it differently. Are you sure that’s what happened?’

It wasn’t long after Abba and Ma went to live with Zia that our sister, Nasreen, and her two children were also forced to move in with him. I’m curious to know from Zia in person how he has adapted to all this.

‘It can be tense and mad at times,’ he responds calmly. ‘Ma manages to complain about most things. As she’s aged it’s become a chronic problem. I’m too tight-fisted, she says, and don’t give her enough money for the household. The servants don’t listen to her. I should employ a better cook. The grandchildren don’t respect their elders. You’ve abandoned her. She’s unable to find a doctor who can be a sympathetic listener. No one’s qualified enough to cure her illnesses. I don’t spend enough time with her. What a hellish life she has…And on it goes.’

‘I suppose Abba isn’t aware of what’s happening around him?’

‘That’s a blessing in some ways. He’s fragile and lonely. His friends are too old to visit. Until about six months ago, I tried to talk to him each evening before dinner. But even then he was on a different level of reality. It was all about the past. He rambled on about the efficiency of the
British civil service, partition and its calamities, how well the family hierarchy worked when he was young. If I spoke about practical matters, like selling the land we owned in Manikpur, he stared blankly at me and then tapped the floor with his walking stick to indicate he’d had enough.’ Zia recalls Abba’s behaviour good-naturedly. ‘If you wanted to end a chat quickly, all you had to do was mention land sales. But now…his language has almost gone.’

‘Must be difficult for you.’ I wince at how hollow my concern sounds. ‘How do you cope with so many people living in the same house?’ Immediately I regret asking. We grew up in a house with aunts, uncles and cousins. But now I shudder at the prospect of living without a sense of space and, more importantly, silence.

‘We manage,’ Zia says. ‘What’s the choice? The company’s given me a big house. I have to bear the family’s responsibilities.’ He pauses. ‘No one else will.’

‘You’re being very generous.’ I’m not exaggerating. Zia’s never been mean-spirited with those who’re close to him. Despite his addiction to power and the luxuries that money can afford, I’ve never known Zia’s self-indulgence to be deliberately at the expense of a relative’s well-being.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve any intention of coming back home permanently.’ He makes no effort to conceal his displeasure at this foregone conclusion.

‘Home? It’s not a physical location any more. More like several places in the mind. I like the flexibility of such an arrangement.’ I manage to nettle Zia. He
doesn’t like abstractions, especially when he wants to argue a case.

As for myself, I’m not entirely convinced by what I’ve just said, now that I’m back in the city where I was born fifty-three years ago. I look out of the car window with mixed emotions. Regret, nostalgia, dread and curiosity create a mesh in which I feel myself trapped and my sense of selfhood already splintering.

I think of a little boy running past sweet shops with a handful of coins, and then stopping to watch a snake charmer piping a tune and mesmerising a cobra. There’s the old fortune teller who scares the lad with talk about ghosts and strange lands. A performance by monkeys and a dance of eunuchs. But interspersed among these memories are more recent images of winter days and the roar of footy fans at the MCG. The aroma of hot chips and the greasy crust of a pie. I’m walking along Bridge Road, window shopping, stopping for a short black. Losing my grip on time as I browse in a bookshop in Carlton. I don’t fully appreciate the pace of my lifestyle until I go overseas.