Untitled Novel : [Chapter 3: Somewhat Vegetarian]

I want to stand here for a while, just taking in the silence of the neighborhood, but the sudden appearance of two fierce-looking stray dogs from the other lane makes me change my mind.

I roll up my trousers up to my knees and walk carefully through the edge of the pool of water in front of the gate, avoiding its murky-looking center. The muddy water seeps into my shoes. Great. The gate is not locked. There’s a doorbell switch near the marble nameplate. I press it out of mere curiosity, making old floodwater ooze out of the sides of the switch, dribble down my palm and soak the cuff of my shirt. So far, so good. I also notice that a few bricks near the nameplate have come off from the wall.

A sudden, swift breeze messes up my hair. The rusty metal knob of the gate creaks as I enter. I put my luggage down on the walkway.

I now notice the house more clearly; all the windows of the first floor have been left open. There appears to be no furniture in the rooms. The interior looks soaked even from the outside, it seems that everything has been moved to the attic and the upper floors.

The flood occurred in September didn’t it? It’s March already.

What makes me more concerned is the realization that not much has dried up even after five months. I can only imagine what the flood level must’ve been during the rains, and to my horror, the water has left its mark on the walls, in the form of a line, running parallel to the ground at a height of about twelve feet. Above this line, the walls aren’t wet; the second floor looks dry, although dusty.

Something appears to have snapped near the foundation of the house, as if the front part of the house has sunken into the ground beneath. I see cracks. That is when I gasp.

Ma was right.

Although it is strongly built and founded, I can tell from a glance that if it rains heavily one more time, and the water remains logged in the neighborhoods again, the earth beneath the structure will no longer be able to bear the weight of the house and will give, causing severe damage to it.

Why haven’t they left already?

The lawn looks desolate. At the edge of it is a plum tree. I remember this tree; Pa had planted it about ten years ago. It looks bent, with most of its branches broken, but has somehow survived the flood miraculously. There is no trace of the flower beds that Ma would so meticulously look after. The vegetable garden in the backyard must have suffered the same fate, I guess.

I’m shaken out of my thoughts by the sound of a window opening on the second floor. It’s Ma.

She stands there for a moment, expressionless, her hands on the window panes, her green dupatta moving slightly in the gentle breeze.

“You’re here.” She smiles, and disappears into the room. I hear hurried footsteps on the staircase. Then, the main door in front of me opens and she rushes towards me, before I can say anything she pulls me into a hug.

“He’s here, he’s here.” She says, barely breathing, a bundle of mixed emotions, she say a lot of things, but her voice breaks with every word she utters, and I realize that I didn’t really comprehend the extent of how much I missed her until now.

She holds my face in her hands, smiling and teary at the same time. I see that she has new wrinkles near her eyes, but they make her look more beautiful. While I try to get a handle on my own emotions, I am reminded of Niaz’s smile. He has her smile.

“That’s enough for now, come on in now.” Says Pa.

He is by the door, laughing as he leans against the doorknob for support. He puts on a chape’in, a pair of sandals,and walks towards me.

He gives me a bone-breaking bear hug and a knuckle-cracking handshake. I’ve always wondered if he does that on purpose. He doesn’t look that strong now- with shoulders a little stooped. He also seems to hold on to things for support every now and then. His beard has the same old volume though. But it was grey and black when I last saw him three years ago. It is grey and white now.

They’ve grown old.

They lead me in and up the stairs to the makeshift living room they’ve created in the middle of what used to be the large hall that was reserved for special occasions, family gatherings and weddings, or when some guests or Pa’s business friends came over to visit.

I now notice that they’ve prepared the room for me, and have cleaned up the carpets, the curtains and practically everything looks neatly arranged. I look at the shiny furniture, the vases, framed childhood photographs of Niaz and myself, methodically put up on a shelf. Everything looks perfect, and yet I feel uncomfortable about this for some reason.

I feel like a guest.

I don’t like it this way, to be made to feel like a visitor in my own home, but I do. And as they ask me to sit down and ask me about what I’d like to eat, I know that I can’t blame them for it. This feeling- it’s in me. It’s my problem that I feel like an alien among my own, the foreigner who’s always been away, who’s grown apart from his family over the years, and slowly, without even realizing it, has never really been around for anything- calamities or celebrations.

I drink hot Saffron tea, zafran kahwa, in quick gulps to clear these sudden, stray thoughts from my mind.

It must be the lack of sleep messing with my head.

They’re happy, it’s all good.

Pa’s seated beside me, with a remote control in his hand, watching the news. There’s something about Syria, something about two dozen civilians being killed in an airstrike on some crazy extremist group.

Ma is bringing platefuls of wazwan for me.

“Here… have some.”

“No, sit down Ma, sit down, kahwa will do.”

“Why didn’t Niaz come in too?” She asks.

“He meant to, but the car wouldn’t enter. You know, with all the water outside.”

“That water-pumping vehicle thingy came to our mohalla the other day. I personally requested the driver to vacuum this puddle in front of our gate. But it’s like my words fell on deaf ears.” complains Pa, annoyance in his voice.

“Based on the look of you, you have been dieting, I presume?” He asks me.

“I’m somewhat vegetarian now.” I joke.

“Somewhat vegetarian? What’s that like? Vegan on weekdays and non-vegetarian on Sundays, ha?” Ma laughs.

“Only on Sundays. See, that’s the point. A nice leafy diet for working days and beef kababs on Sunday.”

I eat till I’m full and ask them about the flood, the damage to the house and how they got by during those days. Hearing their stories trouble me all the more. They tell me that the water entered the first floor through the doors, windows and cracks, and whatever way it could find, completely submerging it; they were wise to have shifted everything in time, before the relentless rains started gaining momentum.

“I had some of my suits and clothes in that cupboard downstairs; I lost them to the water. The car was a wreck when I checked it in the weeks that followed, during which the water started receding. We also couldn’t salvage the fridge and the washing machine. Your mother saved the oven though. I rushed for the television and here it sits.” says Pa as he switches the TV off.

“The locals volunteered, especially the youth, whatever help came, it was just ordinary people distributing food and warm clothes. I even saw boys from our own mohalla helping the stranded through boats.”

They tell me that they had to move everything from the first floor, up the stairs to the second floor all by themselves. Ma holding one end of the tables and the chairs and Pa holding the other.

“It was fun actually, moving furniture together.” says Pa, nudging my elbow and looking at Ma. “Romantic as hell.”

“Only if your knees wouldn’t start creaking.” replies Ma making a face at him.

I like how they are in their fifties and can still flirt with each other.

“Why, what happened to his knees? Pa, what happened?”

“I went to the doctor, alright, there’s nothing to worry about. It’s just knee strain caused by all the heavy lifting.” Pa winks at me.

I get down on the floor and check his knees. Probing the knee caps with my fingertips at various points and making him stretch and bend his legs.

“I almost forgot that you’re a physiotherapist.” Says Pa.

“Yeah, and the best physiotherapist in town too. You need to rest, don’t exert yourself, especially your knees until they get better. You need a break from all that heavy-lifting of yours. No more moving furniture.” I tell him as I sit down again.

We talk about my life in Dubai, about my work, there’s an awkward silence when Pa asks me if I have any intention of getting married. There’s silence in the room, but it is a strange kind of silence, interrupted every now and then with the three of glancing at each other and talking about ordinary things. A couple of hours go like this.

I get up to glance outside the window and it’s already starting to get dark. Pa is sleeping on the sofa and Ma is singing amidst the clinking of plates in the kitchen.

I look at the photos of Niaz and myself on the shelf. In one photo, we’re riding horses at Pahalgam. It was a good day, and we had a lot of fun. I remember it. There are also nervous photos of Pa and Ma holding hands when their marriage was arranged by their parents. They look young, and naïve. They must’ve been twenty-something then.

There’s also an interestingly large photograph in the corner.

A photograph of all the neighborhood kids, huddled close together, outdoors, probably right after a cricket match. I don’t remember this one clearly. But it must be from the time when there was a lot of unoccupied land in the neighborhood where we would play cricket all day. I was ten or twelve, and I wasn’t the best cricketer, which explains why I’m in the background, There’s a girl pulling on my hair, while I pull on hers.

It’s her.

Shirin. I remember her. We were classmates, neighbours. Shirin, the girl with the silver-braces, who helped me do my sums right, the girl with the longest braids in the class who spoke in algebra.

I wonder if she still lives in the other lane.

I recognize another face in the photo- Padma, the fast bowler whose speeding yorkers I disliked. She belonged to one of the few Kashmiri Pandit families of our neighborhood- the Rainas. She was a bit older than us, the school topper. Her family left for Jammu during the early 90s when a large majority of Pandits migrated from their ancestral valley due to the pro-freedom insurgency in the 90s. She was a nice girl, and everyone felt her absence after she and her family left. There she stands in the photograph– flashing a victory sign and smiling.

I last saw her while strolling through Old Delhi a few years ago; we recognized each other from a distance as Kashmiris do. She told me she worked at an IT firm there and her family was still settled in Jammu.

I also notice a familiar face in the photo, he's standing at some distance from the group, looking away. I think his name was Farhan. I never knew him too closely. But I remember some things. I remember that he had pencil-thin arms due to which some of the kids would tease him and not let him play, so he would just sit and watch us play (or walk away?) I can’t recall clearly, but I have a strong recollection of feeling sorry for him, for not having the courage to differ from my peers and go up and hand him the bat or talk to him. I was afraid they would make fun of me too.

There is Riyaz, wearing a red sweater, looking up at the ball he has thrown up, which is a blur in the photograph, but must’ve been suspended in the air in that moment of equilibrium when it was clicked. He lived with his widowed mother right next to our house. His father had died from a straight shot to the chest in the Gaw Kadal massacre, when soldiers fired upon people protesting against house-searches and use of excessive force by the troops. Riyaz was a good off-spinner (or was he a leg-spinner?) He was a spinner though, and was too good a bowler for his age.

We started losing interest in cricket slowly. The opening up of army bunkers on every nook and cranny of the city also played its own deterring role and our cricket club gradually started losing members over the years.

I search the photograph for familiar faces.

There’s Niaz scratching his belly with a wicket stump. And the rest of the faces– they are those cool guys and girls who lived on the other side of the mosque, the ones we copied and tried to be like. I don’t remember any of their names.

My neck is aching.

Ma’s voice wakes me up from my reverie of reminiscence.

“I put all your things in the room upstairs, they’re all unsorted, I didn’t want to misplace anything.” Ma says, as she picks up the plates and trays from the table and leaves the room.

“I appreciate that, you should rest now.” I tell her.

Pa is snoring on the sofa.

The house hasn’t changed as much as I have.

On the floor, I notice a gap between two adjacent carpets. The cement is still wet beneath. I let out a sigh and sit down on the floor.

Where will they go if something happens to this place? What if there is another flood, or more rains, or an earthquake? Why did I even come back here?

I sit there for a very long time.