The Elder Son

 The morning was slowly slipping through Amina’s finger like water.

She had found Imran’s shoes under the kitchen shelf, his schoolbooks hid behind the sofa and an untouched glass of milk colling on the table, a thin film forming on top. Razia's uniform was still unironed. The rice from last night was still in the pot, clinging stubbornly to the sides…

Monday invariably brought in its wake an utter chaos for Amina as she tries to balance everything like the Dasabhuja Durga Maa. And somewhere in this two-room house was Siraj, who was supposed to have swept the floor an hour ago.

“Siraj” … “Siraj. Where has this stupid boy now disappeared to”. Muttered Amina as she hurried around the house trying to bring order to chaos. Her voice was swallowed by Javed's loud snoring from the adjacent bedroom.

She never expected this life. Even after eight years of marriage with Javed.

Her father had been a DSP of police, the first from their community. Her grandfather, Sattar Sahib, had served as Peshkaar in the old royal court before the British took over and made him a revenue officer. They had lived in a sprawling bungalow in Cuttack which was gifted by the erstwhile Raja. A sprawling bungalow with long verandahs, deep ponds ringed with jasmine, a garden with fruit trees ranging from the ordinary mango and guava to varieties Amina had never seen anywhere else. Her grandfather had later given her mother an adjacent plot to build on, when her father was posted away for years at a stretch and the children needed to be settled in one city for school. That house too was beautiful. There was a kitchen garden where the seasonal vegetables grew, and a backyard full of custard apples, guava and Mango that fell into the grass all the time.

As a girl Amina had climbed the mango trees in the back garden and read her textbooks sitting in their shade without a care in the world.

Her grandfather was the one who kindled her love for science by encouraging her to explore everything that appeared mysterious in nature. Why does this happen? What makes that move? She had chased answers like other children chased kites. Her father attended all her annual day where her name was invariably called for first prize in Science Subject. Through her interest and determination, Amina completed bachelor of Science from the local college – a rare feat for a girl from her community. Given her interest in teaching, she went on to complete B.Ed – a fact which was a matter of pride for her family members.

In 1950s India, being a girl who is highly educated and qualified belonging to her community was a sure recipe for disaster from a matrimony perspective. It was difficult for her parents to find a suitable groom for her in their community.

What they eventually found was Javed.

Javed was the son of a Zamindar from the nearby villages. He was good looking and had a government job; a most sought-after groom in the marriage market. However, Javed was looking for a wife who will also be a service holder (a popular term for being in a job). So, the match was hooked, cooked and booked as both the pair were married off and set forth to deal with life’s journey and what came along with it - the joys, discovery and travails notwithstanding.

What Javed had not calculated was the mess of it. The children arriving within three years, the school which took most of Amina’s day time, the cooking and the cleaning and the mountain of small work that waited for her at every hour of the day. This led to quite a bit of ugly scene and not so nice arguments between the husband & wife which proved one point clear as the daylight – Javed’s inability in helping in any way his wife in her daily chore. This arose part from incompetence and part from the lethargy that privilege helped seep through.

In the whole conundrum, Amina’s father-in-law stepped in as a ray of- hope in what was otherwise a bleak scenario stripped off any silver lining. Due to his stature as a Zamindar, he convinced poor families to send their kids as domestic help to Amina’s house, in rerun for a ‘handsome salary’ of Rs 80 per month. The househelp who came in were barely five to six years older than her own kid, a scenario which may appear hilarious and yet was tragic but was the only practical solution which emerged at that point in time and Amina was not complaining either.

The solution came with its agony & pangs. The first boy had cried for a week and run away. So had the second. The third had lasted longer before he was also engulfed by homesickness forcing him to flee.

By now, Amina joked to her friends that the line of her former house-helps would stretch a kilometer from her lane to the main road.

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But the recent one, Siraj, was different from the rest.

He kept the children engaged and looked after them like an elder brother. He was obedient, respectful and consistent, a quality which endeared him to Amina and his family. The one who was the happiest was Javed. He was relieved that now he will not have to bear the brunt of Amina’s taunt for not helping her with household chores and looking after the kids. Coming from a privileged background, he was unaccustomed to the drudgery of household works. He never anticipated that married life will bring in so much responsibility and hardships. One who loves the cool weather that rain brings in should also be ready to deal with the mud and the messiness that comes with it. Amina would think most of the times but will not utter it given the harmony that women are expected to maintain disproportionately in their matrimony.

Siraj, however, settled down quite well in a few weeks’ time. What Siraj truly meant for them, came three months after he arrived, on an ordinary Sunday.

Amina’s daughter Razia was playing with Smita, the daughter of the Marwari family next door. Smita had a beautiful doll which Razia adored but Smita will not have her anywhere close. That Sunday, Razia decided to take things to her own hand to free the doll from the clutches of the ‘evil queen’ Smita. What ensued was the cutest fight ever but transcended to loud shrieks and cries from the children, a common occurrence which was ignored by both kids’ parents.

However, this time, the elder brother of Smita, Kishor, decided to step in and was trying to pull his weights literally, given his seniority.

Siraj has been lying on a palm leaf mat on the verandah watching the ‘cute’ duel with glee. However, he became suddenly uneasy with the appearance of Kishor who has now started to physically push out Razia forcibly.

“Don’t you dare to touch my sister”. Roared Siraj as he caught Razia from falling with one hand while deflecting the next move by Kishor.

Amina was cooking breakfast for the family while simultaneously trying to clean up the house, soak clothes for washing and warding off lecherous advances by Javed who always seemed to be in the mood on Sundays and holidays.

Hearing the cries of Razia followed by Siraj, Amina dropped the cooking spoon which landed down with a thud on the ground as she rushed outside to see what is happening.

There on the ground lay Kishor, still surprised but quick enough to understand it as a genuine assault even as Siraj towered over him with Razia behind him. “How dare you touch my sister and push her to the ground”? Thundered Siraj with the authority and command of an elder brother.

Kishor, who had evidently not expected a servant boy to say anything at all, least of all in that voice, stumbled backward and sat down hard in the dust. Got up. Dusted himself. Said nothing and Left.

It was as atrocious, as bizarre and as surreal as it could get but Amina could not help but notice the adorable demonstration of genuine love, affection and care that Siraj demonstrated in a moment that mattered, at least for her.

Siraj carried Imran on his hips as Razia held on to his hand proudly as they approached her. For a brief moment that day. Amina forgot about her chaotic life, the drudgery that came with it and a husband who was unloving and uncaring and the bleakness of it all. She embraced her three children. That moment she was a proud mother of her children and today her elder son had stood up like a man to confront all that is unjust, unfair and partisan.

That evening Siraj ate two plates of rice and asked if there was more.

He had stopped crying in the mornings a month ago but after that Sunday something had settled in him and he came in fully, the way children do when they finally believe they are allowed.

He had found his home. And if she was honest with herself, so had Amina.

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"The boy has simply vanished into thin air." Javed collapsed onto the sofa, wiping his face with the back of his hand. "I checked the bus stand, the railway station, even the truck depot but nothing. Ye mere Maula, tu meri madad kar. If Abbaji comes to know, he will grill me alive. Siraj's father is a known goonda and that mother of his… tauba, tauba… the woman can raise a storm over a fallen leaf." He had gone quite pale. Amina found this faintly funny but brought him water anyway, as a dutiful wife is expected to do.

"Phone for you." The Marwari Sethani's voice came sharp over the wall. Theirs was one of perhaps three telephones in the entire lane, a fact she ensured nobody forgot alongwith her other prized possessions - colour TV, VHS and telephone all under one roof.

The voice on the line was Abba Ji's, feeble and weak. “Come quickly. Both of you”. The line disconnected on the other side.

They packed in twenty minutes and caught the last bus to the village.

The bus smelled of diesel and tired bodies of people travelling not for joy but out of necessity. Somewhere in its wake, Amina found herself thinking of her Vidaai, that first trip into her husband's world, the shock of arriving from her father's grand house and well-manicured lawn into all this dust and chaos. She had come to understand that some distances were not measured in kilometers.

They reached the village after dark. Irfan was waiting and it was a good thing too as an angry crowd had gathered near the bus stand, pressing around Javed with questions about Siraj. Irfan was a well built and a hefty man. He pushed a clear path through and got them to the ancestral house without incident.

Hazra Bi embraced Javed and her grandchildren, then said to the room at large, carefully not looking at Amina, that in her time women had ten children and still managed their homes properly, that today's modern girls believed a government job absolved them of every other duty. “Tauba tauba”…

“Siraj’s mother, Asma, has been sitting on a hunger strike at the market place and saying that she will only eat from her son’s hand” Said Abba Ji visibly irritated and frustrated. “you rest up Beta. You people had a long journey and must be very tired. We will talk in the morning” Said Abba Ji even as he affectionately patted Amina on the head like a father. He admired his daughter in law and was very happy when the alliance was made. To have a graduate daughter in law is something only few people are blessed with, he will think, an enthusiasm which was not shared equally by his wife.

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Before the Fajar azaan, while everyone slept, Amina slipped out in her burkha and took the long way through the mango orchard to the market square. Asma had set up a befitting spectacle: on a charpai, her arms were raised and she was wailing loud enough to ensure that her voice carried through the market. “Mere bacche ko le gaye, pata nahi kahan hai, haaye, in logon ka gairat ho, Allah inko kabhi maaf na kare” Around her a motley crowd had assembled: some genuinely worried, some came for the fun and some, who were like her, were there to see the performance that she was putting up. After a certain point of time, to Amina, she started resembling like her mother-in-law.

“This woman, Asma… such a drama. We all know where the Son had disappeared and what plan she has…” her voice got lost as the crowd reacted sharply to another of the antics of Asma.

Amina walked back through the orchard in the early light, the dew cold underfoot. She had heard enough to know that something evil & insidious is at play.

The next morning, over breakfast on the Dastarkhan, Javed proposed returning to the city. His friend Manoj was the DSP there and could help in the search immensely. He said this with careful phrasing and due rehearsal because Abba Ji still had, even now, the ability to make him feel like twelve years old. After giving it some thought, Abba Ji nodded and said “I think you are right Javed. Your presence at the city will be more fruitful than here. Don’t worry about the people here. I will handle them”. He said with some degree of conviction.

They left that afternoon. As the bus pulled away Amina watched Abba Ji's figure shrink at the gate, even as he waved at them. She felt particularly sad as she understood the sorrow of leaving someone behind who deserves better than what life has handed them. Javed watched his village disappear from the window.

They reached the city late and found a rickshaw home to the two-roomed house where it all started.

From the next day, Javed took off along with Amina to start searching for Siraj. This was part owing to the love and affection for the boy but mostly due to the fear of official action as Siraj was still a minor and having disappeared from their care, they could be held accountable and it may have adverse effect on their job.

What also helped was that the city DSP, Manoj, was a school friend of Javed and when Javed reached out to him, he was very supportive and assured all assistance.

They split the search in 2 parts: Javed would work with his friend, DSP Manoj to locate the boy with the help of the police team and Amina with her brother would try to scour the neighborhood to find out the whereabouts of Siraj. Luckily, they had a photo of Siraj which was clicked when the family went off for a photoshoot in the local photo studio recently. As Siraj had become close to them as a family, they also invited him to join them for the photo. In the photograph, he stood slightly apart from the others, not quite sure of his place in the frame, but present.

The search went on for almost a week with the city police leaving no stone unturned to find the servant boy of Manoj Sahib’s friend. They rounded up all suspects from their list including child lifters, ex-felons, small time thieves and others with some criminal record. The search was so intense with police vehicle coming 2 – 3 times a day to pick up Javed that it led the neighbors to start developing respect for both Amina & her husband for their ‘higher’ connection in the police hierarchy.

The search of Amina with her brother also did not yield much results. The people in the neighborhood were sympathetic of their situation but could not help much beyond that. Looking at the photo, many thought that it was Amina’s kid that had disappeared but were not very supportive when they came to know that it was their servant that they were looking for. Some of them even showed utter surprise to see Amina getting so concerned about a servant disappearing. “These vagabonds roam around for few days and when they become tired & hungry, they all come back, eventually”. Was how an old grumpy lady summed up.

Nobody had seen him.

While Javed was anxious about this event snowballing and affecting his job, Amina was much more saddened in way a mother will understand. She missed the reassuring presence and persona of Siraj who, like an elder son always stood by her and was also a very loving brother to her children.

On the eighth evening, tired and worn out, more mentally than physically, Amina asked Javed to get some food from the local Muslim hotel Ajmatiya.

Ajmatiya was the old hotel on the main road, run by the third generation of the Habib brothers, famous in the Sultan Bazar area for its meat dishes. Siraj had loved the place. In his free hours he would wander over just to stand near the kitchen and talk to the staff. Maybe it was his way of socializing and fend off loneliness. Amina didn't think of this when she sent Javed.

She was just tired and hungry.

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Javed pushed through the door of Ajmatiya and joined the short queue at the counter. It was the evening rush; a few regulars seated at the heavy wooden tables, the smell of mutton shorba and something caramelising in the back, the low murmur of conversation. He gave his order and stood waiting, half-watching the door to the kitchen for his order.

The door swung open.

Out came a boy carrying a tray, moving with the trained ease of someone who knew the room. Blackened hands, a smear of coal dust across one cheek, wearing working clothes with his head down and concentrating on the tray.

Then the boy looked up.

Javed felt the recognition hit him like a nuclear missile. The world seemed to go briefly spinning in his head. There was Siraj. His Siraj, their missing Siraj, the boy whose disappearance had cost Javed a week of sleep and a humiliating number of visits to Manoj's office. Here, in an apron, carrying food to someone else's table.

"Siraj!"

The word came out louder than he really wanted with every head in the room turning towards him. Siraj stopped. For one moment the boy looked at Javed indifferently with no guilt & surprise. It was an expression of a person who may have been found but had not been exactly hiding.

Javed covered the distance between them in four steps and grabbed the boy by the arm.

What happened next went fast like a blur. The tray went flying. The two men from the kitchen came through the door. A chair scraped. One of the Habib brothers, the heavyset one who managed the floor, stepped between Javed and Siraj with his arms out, trying to pacify him in low voice that Javed could not hear over the rage in his head. Javed tried to go around him. He couldn't and swung around and caught an elbow somewhere on his face or perhaps he walked into the wall, later he couldn't be sure. Suddenly, he found himself outside on the pavement, with a cut lip and a torn shirt and the door closing behind him. The Marwari Seth from the lane was passing by on his evening walk and saw him.

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Amina heard the commotion from inside and came out to the verandah to find Javed at the gate with the Seth holding his elbow, blood at the corner of his mouth. Before she could get to him, he pulled his arm free and came inside walking past her. Then he turned and that’s when it all came out.

“This is your doing. You gave him too much liberty. You encouraged him. You treated him like one of the family and now look… look at what is happening now.”

She stood there and did not say anything. She had learned this over the years, that certain things were like monsoon squalls: they came, they went, and the only thing to do was stand still and wait them out, because whatever you did in the middle of them only made things worse.

She thanked the Seth, who left with a sympathetic look at Javed and a disappointed one at Amina.

Then she sat down.

Siraj had been at Ajmatiya all along. He had been working of his own choosing and full knowledge of the hotel staffs. He had not been kidnapped or lost or in any danger. He had simply left, and gone somewhere he wanted to go, and continued to exist cheerfully a fifteen-minute walk from their house while they turned the city upside down for him.

She did not know, sitting there, whether what she felt was anger or relief or something in the region of grief which could not be named. She lay down and stared at the ceiling.

That night she did not sleep.

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The next day she took leave from the school after the farcical incidence of the previous day and found that Javed was also languishing at home. Unable to bear his sight, she took a rickshaw and bundled her kids on to it heading towards her parents’ home.

Getting back to one’s parents’ house is the most cherished and treasured moment for any girl, especially after marriage. Amina was not someone who was known to run to her parents’ house at the slight sign of hardship. However, this incident proved to be beyond her tolerance and patience and she needed a good break from all the chaos and confusion.

She does not know for how many days and nights she slept. Her mother would try to wake her up and feed her even as she stayed in a dazed condition. Again, she will slip back to the stupor, a dreamless sleep where you find yourself in a twilight zone, swinging between day & night, between clarity and confusion and between trust & betrayal.

“Amina, beta Amina… Wake up Beta, see Habib Sahib is here to see you”. Amina’ s mother voice seemed to echo and come as if from a far-off valley. Giving a faint smile in her dream, Amina changed side and went off to her sleep. Only after a strong jolt and violent shaking by her mother that Amina finally came to her senses.

Putting a Dupatta on her head, Amina walked to her father’s study where Habib Sahib, the owner of Ajmatiya hotel was sitting.

Seeing her come, he got up courteously and said half embarrassingly “Bitiya, sorry to trouble you and wake you up. I really wanted to see you and explain things so that you should not count me as guilty as I will have to show this face to Sattar Sahib in the Yome – Qayamat” He said almost embarrassingly and full of regret.

Keeping his eyes low, Habib Sahib continued, “Beta, I never wanted to take the fool Siraj as one of my staff. But what can I do, my sons would not have any of it. The staffs also know him and have gotten fond of him. I was helpless,” Said a visibly dejected Habib Sahib.

“On top, Siraj’s father came and threatened us that if we did not give him money, he will let you know that we have lured Siraj to join our hotel. Its only when I came to know that they have created ruckus in the village and also received confirmed news that they were trying to extort good amount f money from you Bitiya, that I said enough is enough and came running to you” Habib Sahib was now visibly shaken and disturbed, perhaps in the apparent guilt of being the culprit who has set off this unfortunate chain of events, started to shed some unabashed tears.

“On top of that, my wretched blood had also the temerity to mishandle Damad Ji... Chi, Chi, Chi”…. He started crying uncontrollably.

Amina’s father comforted him but he was beyond consolation. Izzat and Waqar (dignity & honor) meant a lot to people of his generation and he could not bear to see the same now run down to the ground due to the unfolding events.

That evening she took a rickshaw home.

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The rickshaw came down the main road and slowed turning into the lane. Ajmatiya was on the corner, its doors were open and the evening smell of coal smoke and cooking mutton drifting out into the dusk.

And there was Siraj.

He was crouched at the side of the building beside the coal stove, extracting the spent pieces, sorting the usable coal with the same complete and serious attention he had once given to every task in her house. His hands and face were black with it as he was utterly absorbed in it.

He looked up as the rickshaw approached. Saw her.

His face opened into a smile: a wide, innocent, a flash of white in a coal-dark face. It was not the smile of a boy who knew he had caused trouble. It was the smile of someone who was simply glad to see her, and wanted her to know something without having the words for it; beyond the deviousness and plotting of his parents, beyond the accusations and allegations that everyone was heaping on him he wanted her to know…

“I am all right, Mother. I found the place I was always looking for. Don't be angry with me.”

Amina looked at him.

She felt the months of his presence in her house, the early morning crying, the doll fight, the two plates of rice, the stories about his village told while he swept; and she felt them pass through her without the sharp edge of grief she had expected.

He had not been hers to keep. He had been, for a little while, exactly what she needed, and she had been, she hoped, something of the same for him. It was enough. It was beautiful and as with every beautiful thing, it must come to an end.

She gave him the smallest nod. Just enough. Then she turned back to her children.

Imran had fallen asleep against her arm. Razia was watching the lane go by with her serious eyes. Amina tucked a loose lock of hair back from her daughter's face and held her close.

She thought about Javed. He would be home already, probably, sitting in the dim of the bedroom with his injured face and his bruised pride and the particular sullenness of a man who knows, somewhere, that he was wrong. She thought about the door she had closed so long ago and whether it was too late to open it, and decided, in the way you decide small things sometimes in the back of a rickshaw, without fanfare, that it was not.

That nothing was too late for people who loved each other, started a life together for the love and now bonded together by their beautiful children. Now, no matter how imperfect their relationship has been, there is always time for new beginnings.

She would go home. She would make the dal he liked, the slow Friday one, with the proper tadka and the whole spices and the patience that the Ajmatiya cook had explained to Siraj, who had explained it to her. She would put the children to bed. And then, perhaps, for the first time in longer than she could clearly remember, she would sit down with her husband and actually talk to him.

The rickshaw moved on down the lane.