Chowk Tale

I think I have malaria. That, or chicken pox. Faced with another day sick at home with a four month old waiting for my man to come home and give me a break by taking the baby (and moving to Zambia), I opt to run like the wind to my mothers house. Not the fiery paced Quetta wind storming through trees, plains, and high rise apartments on its way to my corner of Karachi but rather the gentle breeze that plays delicately with the clothes on the line just when you need them to dry quickly. I would go faster if I could, but all the lights are red today.

It is a fine Karachi morning and the beggars are swarming. Like flotsam on life’s swells they break upon the shore of my car window. Well, my maids car window. So well groomed am I, so attractive post birth, that they look at the two of us with the baby in between and decide she is the begum and I, the hired help. I am amused and grateful. Her attention to the niceties of hair, make-up and clothes protects me from the old man with the crutch, the young boy with the monkey, the hijra with the attitude and the woman with the baby (in the order in which they approached). It seems everyone must have an accessory in the game of need nowadays.

Wali Khan my self appointed brother (with him I don’t mind because he is a nice man, never mind that his niceness increased in inverse proportion to my abandonment of old bad habits as pregnancy set in) keeps inching the car forward to get away from the human wave. Is he saving me from harassment or embarrassment? I wonder if he has seen the footage currently being edited at hubbys office. It is an interview with an adolescent kidnapped from Karachi two years ago and recovered only recently. He spent most of his missing months in a camp where beggars were made.

The boy talks about how others in the camp were deliberately mutilated and trained so they could be better beggars. “They pulled out this girls fingernails in front of me”, he says. Afterwards we had discussed the monotone in which he recounted what to us are savage deeds worthy, at least, or hysteria. Nayyar, a scriptwriter for TV and creative in an Ad agency, told me about her visit to the site of a mass murder in Karachi ten years ago. “The walls and floor were covered in blood. Eight people of the family had been slaughtered in one room alone, including children. I started crying. A man who survived took a finger out of his pocket, held it in my face and said it was his child’s finger. He seemed so calm. I think it’s the shock Shandy you know?”

I don’t. No one close to me has ever been violently slain. And the constant sight of mutilated arms, legs, torso’s and faces at traffic lights has made me immune. I do not wish to pass this immunity onto my child. Perhaps I will raise him in a refrigerator box after all.

As we drive I finger through the faux leather of my bag the printed out pages of my latest writing effort. Poems for kids. Maybe I should have another ritual burning I think. The nice lady at the publishing house was kind. She said the poem was delightful. It takes her only ten seconds after that word, that luscious word, to get to the bit about how they are not accepting any more manuscripts till mid-2004 on account of a back log. Those were a fun few seconds though. And I am comfortable again in the arms of my familiar, rejection.

Bean fidgets in his car seat. He wants to sit up, stand up, run even. Last week he started rolling from back to stomach. Then stomach to back. Then both together. I must watch him constantly now. I’m beginning to really like it as not only does it give me something to do also he can’t form the word but yet. I love you but…I want to but…its delightful but….

Trying to distract myself with the terrible state of the world doesn’t always work. Today is one of those days. How fortunate I am to not be a) Iraqi b) maimed c) man d) poor e) alone is quickly answered with How unfortunate am I to be a) Pakistani b) fat c) woman d) financially dependent e) lonely. All over the world people are agitating, vacillating or salivating over the big War question, but I feel strangely detached from it all. Sort of like a disembodied voice only without the voice. Even my mothers take on her walk in the park yesterday can’t rouse me from my slumber.

“S probably has cancer. She’s had a biopsy but she says even if they tell her she needs an operation she wont have one. And R agrees. She says her diabetes is getting worse. Going to the doctor now is pointless because at our age what choice is there really? Our bodies are just winding down.” I wonder if this fatalism in the usually cheerful is a recent thing. The generally harmless cynicism of the middle aged and elderly exacerbated by recent hints that the world is going to hell. They have other things to be happy about though. Children, grandchildren, advancements in fat free and sugar free food technology. I don’t say any of this though, just grunt. Articulate, that’s me.

When I check my mail there is a mail in my inbox from a chowk editor saying if I don’t have time for a regular column I should consider writing a piece for headless chicken. I read this as even chowk doesn’t want you any more and fire of a reply worthy of Bean in all his four month old splendor. Then I feel bad for snapping at someone who is kind, gentle and good. If I must snap at someone, I think, why not snap at someone who deserves it?

My husband isn’t home so I have to find another target.

And I begin writing again. Word by word, the pustules erupt. The infection begins to drain. Such a fine motivator, is guilt. Type type type, tap tap tap, may I have this dance? It doesn’t matter that I’m out of practice and out of step. It doesn’t matter that I’m silly, selfish, self indulgent and misinformed. So is George Bush, and he rules the most powerful nation on earth.