Branded Clothes and Fame Smiles

Delhi, just like any metropolitan city in India, is characterized by a stark inequality in income. It’s a beautiful city to be in, with its diverse traditions, multifarious cultures and rich heritage. As the political capital of the country, and the hub of economic development in India, it is the seat of power. It has managed to provide ample comforts to most of its citizens, and lavish luxuries to an elite few. However, there are still those belonging to the lower rung of society, who haven’t managed a share in what this city has to offer.

When I arrived here last year, as one of the fortunate few to have gained admission in Lady Shri Ram College, one of the most prestigious academic institutions of the country, I felt a sense of pride, which I believed to be justified. The first year went in parties and social gatherings; I was acquainting myself with the Delhi culture and its people. I still recall those late night parties at F-Bar, the fashion lounge in Delhi. I remember flaunting my Gucci bag and silver studded Jimmy Choos, experiencing a sense of smugness on being introduced to the so-called ‘socialites’ – the cream of Delhi’s society, with their genuine branded clothing and fake smiles. I recall the free mojitos at Urban Pind Lounge on Wednesdays, the silver apple flavoured hookahs at Mocha, the leisurely afternoons spent at the Delhi Golf Club over sandwiches as my friends played golf. I recall the shopping sprees at Mango, the thick crust pizza with extra jalapeños at T.G.I. Friday’s, the head banging at Cafe Morrison, and the road trips to my friend’s farmhouse located on the outskirts of the city, where we’d spend our nights over beer and poker.

This was Delhi. The Delhi I’d heard of all my life. And I was thoroughly convinced that I’d seen it all. I’d been there and done all of that, and lay comfortably deluded and blissfully ignorant of what lay beyond my senses. But when reality dawns on you, unveiling the silken curtains of illusion that shield the ugly truth, leaving it naked and exposed for you to see, it’s as though the world you created around you crumbles. And once this facade crumbled in front of my eyes, I was left inundated by questions for which answers never existed.

It all happened on that fateful Friday afternoon, when I was on my way to a particularly posh gallery to view a particular designer’s exhibition. Delhi is famous for its haute couture, and I wanted to pick up a few designer sarees for my mom’s birthday. It was a sultry day for most. But for me it was just any ordinary day, since I prefer not to expose myself to Delhi’s heat. I was in my friend’s air-conditioned BMW, and its tinted glasses cut me off from the city’s heat, squalor, sweat and grime. When our car halted at the red light of a busy crossing at Lodhi Road, we were suddenly surrounded by vendors selling packaged strawberries, garlands of white flowers or gajras, pirated books, cheap plastic toys, cut pieces of coconuts, and sundry other things.

I was oblivious to these vendors and beggars. As I sat humming Good Charlotte’s Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, I was suddenly thrown off by a rap on my window. I saw my friend beside me scrunch up her face in disgust and turn the other way. I squinted through my tinted window at the figure of a woman draped in rags with a begging bowl and a small portrait of Santoshi Mata. These details, however, skipped my notice at first since the woman carried a mutilated baby in her arms. I was utterly horrified and unable to react.

“Ugh!” exclaimed Sonika beside me grimacing. “It’s a shame that they’re even allowed to live. Don’t bother with them, Bhavika.”

My hand had reached my purse in order to pull out a tenner, when she stopped me by remarking “They’re the scum of the earth. Absolute eyesores. Polluting our environment more than anything else.”

Her boyfriend, Ashim, who was sitting in the front seat, rolled down his window. But it was for no altruistic and charitable deed that he did. He merely wished to ash his cigarette.

“Beta, mera bachha bhookha hai (Son, my child is hungry),” she implored. “Bhagwaan tera bhala karega (God will be merciful towards you).”

Ashim smirked and replied, “Marne de (Let him die).” Then turning towards us he said, “Fuck these guys, man. They’re irksome to the core.”

I hadn’t recovered from my horror yet, and my eyes remained transfixed on the distorted child she carried. My mind was urging me to help the woman, yet my hands refused to move. It was as though something was blocking the pity from flowing to my heart. And that ‘something’ was not any innate badness that I possessed; it had been created by those around me.

Those few moments seemed like hours to me. My eyes darted to Ashim, who was now busy abusing Delhi’s congested traffic on his Blackberry. Sonika was holding out a few hundred rupees to a vendor selling her a pirated DVD of The Devil Wears Prada. My eyes then darted back to the dishevelled woman, who was now walking away, her child clasped to her breast. The traffic signal turned green, our car moved ahead, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her. As we drove on her figure became smaller and smaller, slowly fading into the blur of cars and smoke. I could soon see her only as a dot in the distance, a dot that stood for all women. Women who face abject poverty and vicissitudes in life. Women who are exploited and suppressed by the society they depend on. Women who need to emancipate themselves socially, economically and politically. Women who depend on us to be uplifted, but are shunned by those they rely on. The child in her arms depended on her for its sustenance, without realizing that she herself was dependent on a world too occupied by its own selfish motives to care.

I tried to ignore the guilt pangs and pacify my conscience. So what if I hadn’t offered her charity? It wasn’t as if one ten-rupee note paid to one beggar would reduce the level of impoverishment in our country, bridging the income divide. What I failed to realize (or chose not to realize), was that every drop makes an ocean. We have to start somewhere to get somewhere. One altruistic deed may not affect our country’s poverty levels; it may, however, affect someone’s life.

I admired the rich hand-stitched kantha embroidery work on the saree I picked up for my mom from Friday’s exhibition. It was a lazy Sunday morning, and I was sitting on my balcony enjoying the cool breeze and the hot aroma of my coffee. The saree was of a turquoise hue; its kantha work was intricately spread, and its motifs were elegant and beautiful. It was an expensive piece, yet it left me satisfied. I turned to the newspaper spread out on my table and the headline caught my attention. ‘Begging an Organized Crime: Child on Lodhi Road drugged and maimed by father.’ I was shaken out of my dreamy stupor, as a thousand thoughts rushed to my mind. ‘Two year old boy handicapped by his father ... used as a prop by his mother ... mother regularly beaten and sexually abused by the child’s father.’ The memory of the disfigured child and his wretched mother came back to me, a picture that had imprinted itself in my mind and would refuse to fade into oblivion, no matter how hard I tried to push it away.

The hollowness and superficiality of my life dawned on me, as I clasped the rich fabric in my hand. It suddenly felt no different from the dull and tattered cloth worn by the poor and the homeless, in a fabricated world.

A Death Foretold

On the day they were going to kill him, Mohammed Abdul Rasheed got up at five in the morning, to attend the morning prayer at the local mosque. Dressed in white, his crocheted taqiyah neatly covering his head and his prayer book tucked under his arm, he went through the house with long strides, as the shadows of dawn danced upon the earthen walls. He walked toward the winding pathway leading to the courtyard of the mosque, smiling at the little boys on their bicycles, on their way to the madrassa. He passed the khejri tree under which the village panchayat was gathering to discuss matters pertaining to the community at large. The young girls beside the pond by the village post-office, looked away coyly as he approached them, hiding their faces with the rims of their sarees. The youngest and the most beautiful of them all, lovingly called Beba by the village folk, was the only one who looked up to catch his eye. She walked with him toward the shady grove at the water’s edge, where he asked her not to entertain anyone this evening, for he would stop by at her kothi before dusk.

The air was still, and the cocks were crowing, just as they had in his dream the night before. It was a calm and quite morning, just like most mornings in the quaint little village of Samain, in spite of the revelry which had continued till the sun decided to rise on the paddy fields. Marriages were a big affair in this small town in Fatehabad, especially if one or both of the betrothed belonged to the moneyed class. So when Ramesh Tyagi, the son of a money lender from Rohtak, decided to woo and finally wed Pavitra, daughter of a craftsman in our village, the proposal was met with much jubilation. Pavitra was a distant relative of mine, and I remember her as a young girl, reticent and homely. On those few occasions when, tired of the grime and squalor of the city, I would come down to Samain to spend a few leisurely weeks in the rural countryside, I’d live a couple of days with her. She kept to herself mostly, scrubbing pots or cooking for the family. When her father went blind, her brothers Shiv and Prithvi took upon themselves the task of earning for the family’s meager wants, by raising chicken in the backyard. As for Pavitra, she confined herself to the chores, under the watchful eye of her mother.

I was staying at her place, when Ramesh came to town with a job at hand, and decided to inform the entire village that the pretty damsel washing clothes at the ghat had caught his fancy. The very next day, her family received sweets and bouquets of freshly pruned flowers, a fair barter for her love. Initially, the khap panchayat had annulled the marriage, holding that it violated the age-old custom defining the areas of incest, and prohibiting marriages within the same gothra. However, when they heard that Ramesh had plans of setting up a bank in the district, they blessed the couple and pronounced it a match made in heaven. So Pavitra, the new bride with vermilion on her forehead, was told by her mother that love too can be learned, and was led away like cattle.

On the day they were going to kill him, I was packing my bags and getting ready to leave for the city. The rickshaw-puller waited impatiently outside, surrounded by the village dogs, barking excitedly and pacing the yard. Away from my knowledge, Pavitra lay locked in the next room, bruised and beaten, her salty tears streaming down to her trembling lips. She had been returned that very night, similar to the cattle which the butcher deems unfit to slaughter and sell. On being asked to reveal the identity of her clandestine lover, she had looked in the shadows, only to find Mohammed's name among the many, and she nailed it to the wall with her well-aimed dart. And away from my knowledge, beside the little shop where Kavita sold milk and local brew, Pavitra’s brothers were waiting to kill him. Everyone knew that they were going to kill him. And everyone thought he knew it as well. But Mohammed Abdul Rasheed walked down the winding pathway from the mosque, at peace after the mualvi’s blessings, blissfully unaware of his impending fate. It was as though fatality makes one invisible.

As my rickshaw pulled toward the village square, the contraption creaking under the weight of my baggage, I heard a commotion in the distance. And I saw the dust rising up as numerous feet shuffled in that direction. I climbed down, and stopped a passerby to question her about the chaos.

“The Hindu men have killed the Muslim boy,” deplored the old woman, clutching her beads to her breast.

In a community where Hindus and Muslims lived in harmony, this piece of news disturbed me deeply. I turned toward Bittu, a boy working at the chai dukaan, and grabbing him by the shoulders I asked him the same question, a bit more frantically this time.

“What’s done is done,” he replied insightfully, shaking his head.

“It had to happen,” explained the village chowkidar beside me. “The panchayat believes it. So do the people. If a virgin will not bleed, then the perpetrator must.”

Gauri Behn, coming from the opposite direction, wailed aloud. “They’ve killed Mohammed Rasheed. They killed him for honour, when there is no honour in killing. We all killed him. Both you and I, and each one of us.”

Before she could complete her sentence, I found myself running toward the crowd. As I approached Mohammed, the man who we had killed off to keep alive our honour, he was in the throes of death, gasping, choking and sputtering like a fish out of water. He clutched his side, where the blood had imbrued his cotton jubbah, and was slowly forming a pool in the dusty ground.

“Allah will forgive them for their sins, for Allah is oft-forgiving, most merciful.”

With these last words, he stopped struggling, lay still and closed his eyes. I remained kneeling beside him, till his chest stopped heaving, and his head dropped to one side. The village folk soon dispersed, some grieving, some lamenting, some doubting, some believing. The sun was slipping behind a cloud, and its waning rays bedimmed the village square. Yet Mohammed Abdul Rasheed's face glowed, under the darkening sky, its expression serene and almost childlike. I looked at my hands, carmine stained, like those of the priest at the sacrificial altar. Allah, most merciful one, only you know whether this man has sinned or not. But as for our sins, would you ever forgive them?