To whom could I put this question (with any hope of an answer)?
Does being able to live without someone you loved mean you loved her less than you thought. . .?
Roland Barthes, Mourning Diary
As soon as he pressed the switch for electricity, the whole flat came to life as if possessed by an evil spirit. The ceiling fan turned its head and arms crying in evil trance. The refrigerator moaned in the corner. The exhaust fan groaned in the empty wall. The tube light flickered two three times before it lit up the whole flat with its electric buzz. The flat, it seemed to Ruzbihan, was a big eye which blinked and gazed upon him with its white light making him feel alone. In the stillness of Delhi heat, he could only see a moth circling religiously the fluorescent tube light, sometimes hitting the blinding luminousness of the tube. The moth-head clinking disturbed the stillness.
Ruzbihan is silent as usual.
Memories flickered inside Ruzbihan and the blazing Delhi heat burned with the memory of a cold Srinagar morning. It was early March. The schools and colleges had just started. Ruzbihan was on his way to College. When he reached the Exchange Road, he heard a loud sound. He was tossing the sides in his head whether it was a cracker or a gun shot, when he heard a fusillade. The birds escaped their nest in nearby chinars. He sat down on the road and covered his head with his hands.
Another round of gun shots went by and he could now hear the buzzing sound of bullets. He realized that he was not very close to the incident but was actually involved in it. He saw military vehicles surrounding the building nearby. A vegetable rickshaw was standing by the corner of the road and he hid himself behind it.
In few moments bullets showered fast like rain. Ruzbihan could see the bullet shower tearing down the outer walls of the building. He was about to hide near the taxi stand when he saw a girl with a book in her hand, wearing white uniform, walking down the road undisturbed. She had ear plugs on. Music made a horrifying beautiful umbrella under which she was safe from bullet shower. He could hear bullets buzzing around her. So, he took a long step and grabbed the girl by her arm and pushed her down behind the vegetable rickshaw with him. The girl, astonished and surprised by this act responded immediately with a loud slap which instantly dissolved in louder bullet sounds. Ruzbihan was silent. Rubbing his right cheek, he gently pulled out the ear plug out of the girl’s right ear. The girl blushed red.
Next thing that Ruzbihan remembered was a copy of Romeo and Juliet held tightly between her fingers.
This was his first meeting with Rabia.
A drop of sweat trailed down its being from the temple of forehead to Ruzbihan’s cheek. The heat dissolved it entirely. He rubbed his face with his sleeve. The heat was unbearable. The Jinn was humming something devilish from the electric devices.
Ruzbihan is silent as usual.
He decided to move out in the balcony but, the loo slapped him back in. He closed the balcony door and gazed upon the empty room. Suddenly all voices stopped and all he could hear was the clinking sound of the moth tossing its head against the tube light. After a while it also ended.
The room buzzed with silence, darkness and heat.
When the light came, it came with a foul luminosity, shaking up every electric device as well as Ruzbihan. The ugly little feathers of moth throbbed like Ruzbihan’s heart and it started circling the fluorescence of tube religiously as if it wanted to get inside the tube light. As if it wanted to dissolve itself in the luminousness of its being. As if it knocked the door with its head. This sight, after a long time, filled Ruzbihan’s heart with hope. He remembered this feeling. It always accompanied him whenever he was with Rabia.
Rabia was a girl who had dreams. Rabia was a girl who had dreams every day. Rabia was a girl who dreamt every moment and the next moment she fulfilled that dream. “Do you know who you are?” Ruzbihan said to her once, when they were walking the Jhelum bund. “You are a dream-seller” to which Rabia replied sharply, “No! I am a dreamer. I don’t sell dreams, you just buy them.” And with that Rabia dreamt of red chinar leaves falling down autumnly from the mighty branches as fire drops. She held a chinar leaf in her snowy hands and said to Ruzbihan, “See! I hold fire in my hands.” She grabbed his arm, “Let’s go.” “Where?” Ruzbihan asked surprisingly, and in few hours she brought him to the university’s Naseem Bagh. The autumn leaves of chinar carpeted unevenly the whole bagh. “Let’s walk on fire” Rabia said to Ruzbihan.
After that, they walked on chinar leaves making rustling sounds. Ruzbihan looked at Rabia. She was walking with her eyes closed as if in a trance. She was the strangest girl he had ever met. She did every dream real. She ate barbeques with him by the roadside. When she wanted Ice-cream that day, she wanted the cheapest and the dirtiest quality that would make her tongue and lips orange red. She hanged from the crowded bus happily. She ate masala by Amar Singh College. She had to smoke in rain. She had to walk down Lal Chowk while chewing the pan. She had to. She had to do each and everything that came to her mind. That time Ruzbihan could not understand why. But, now he knew why she did so. She had very little time left.
Ruzbihan is silent as usual.
He felt a pain in the middle of his chest. The light of pain was burning bright. He lay down with his arms open. All the ominous sounds were crying loud. The moth had spread its little wings on the tube light. The light was too bright and he felt as if he was in a hospital. These lights are fit only for hospitals, he thought. He longed for the yellow light of bulbs. He switched off the tube light. There was darkness and all he could see was the machines moaning like zombies. He remembered the similar moans that he heard in ICU where Rabia was kept.
Rabia had told Ruzbihan that no one will understand. No one would understand their relation. You can’t argue. But, Ruzbihan insisted that everything can be made to understand when one talks and discusses. He insisted that she talk to her parents. And when she did, the discussion hardly started. Her parents had clear cut opinions; “We are Syed and that’s enough argument”.
Syed Rabia. She hated that name. She fought her parents for a long time. Then one day banged the door and left the house. She was going to meet Ruzbihan when she got caught up in stone pelting near Khanyar. She walked furiously but could not beat the tear gas shell coming her way. It hit her head, spilling all her dreams. Her head opened like a Pandora’s Box, the only difference being that hope left first. Doctors reported that she is not fighting. She has lost the hope to live.
Ruzbihan reached the hospital but Rabia’s parents did not allow him to see her. When he begged for a few moments, then only did they let that Milkman’s son to see their dying Syed daughter. Ruzbihan entered ICU where the machines were wailing rhythmically. Rabia was in bed with wires and pipes surrounding her. She was still looking beautiful. A lonely drop of tear rested peacefully in the corner of her eye. He picked it up and kissed it. He touched her hand thinking that she will wake up. But, she did not. The screen of the TV smashed into pieces.
Rabia always told Ruzbihan that he watched too much TV and stuffed his mind with its sheen. Arguments, love and wisdom don’t work in real life. Life and people are harsh like bad weather. They don’t argue nor do they ask. They come and do what they are supposed to do. Ruzbihan broke the TV into pieces and burnt all the books. He only kept Romeo and Juliet.
Ruzbihan is silent as usual.
He heard a scream. He woke up, opened the door and looked out of the balcony. A girl had jumped out of her window to death. People kept setting the order of things around the event but the discourse involved a boy and a disagreement between families. The boy killed himself and on hearing this, the girl also did as her beloved. Lovers are like that, Ruzbihan thought. He closed the door and turned on the light. It flickered with a sharp electric buzz and the moth did its ritualistic dance. Lovers are like that.
The dance of madness started when Rabia died. The memory lanes of Ruzbihan were full of blood and so were the lanes of Srinagar. When the news of Rabia’s death reached neighborhood, people pelted stones at the military camp that shot the tear gas. The situation aggravated when military tried to stop the procession of Rabia’s Jinazah. People shouted in anger and threw stones like bullets. Ruzbihan was silent. He had not spoken a word nor had any intention of uttering one. When he saw his friend Imtiyaz Qureshi pelting stones, he grabbed a big stone. He wanted to put that stone violently into Imtiyaz’s Qureshi head and then take out the stone dripping with blood and pelt it on military.
Ruzbihan is silent as usual. Lovers are like that.
The moth is ready to die bright. Suddenly, he remembers, he too is a lover whose beloved is dead. He questions himself violently. ‘How can he be alive if his Rabia is dead.’ The moth circles the light and Ruzbihan feels that it is only a mockery. It knows that that the light can’t kill it, that’s why he circles it. Ruzbihan laughs aloud. The fan and refrigerator laugh back at him. He wants to grab the moth and press it hard between his thumb and finger and say to him, “You want to die, here’s it. Why mock your love with this ritual of circling.”
Ruzbihan is silent as usual. He wants to break his silence. The ritual. The mockery.
He wanted to die. But, he did not die. He just circled ritually like the moth in the room. He should have died right there in Rabia’s lap. That would have been love. He would have been a true lover. He should have killed himself. Jumped out of the window. But, he was alive. He was ashamed of himself. He felt he was a liar. A con. He didn’t pelt stones. He kept himself safe and when it came back violently, he escaped to Delhi, to his friends spacious flat. He chose life and acted silent death. It was all a lie. Lie fluttering its wings like the moth circling the tube light. It knew it won’t die. He knew. It kept fluttering. He kept beating.
Ruzbihan is watching moth’s mockery, its farce over the tube light. Suddenly the light goes and all he could hear is buzzing heat. He imagines he is in a grave. But then he knows he is not. Even if he is, the grave is never so spacious. A mockery. A farce. Suddenly he dreams something. He gets up, grabs something from the table and comes back.
The room is all dark. The electric Jinn is silent. Even the moth is lost in the darkness. Only heat buzzes. He fires a cigarette lighter and waits patiently for the moth.
Muzaffar Karim
06 October 2012
