“Get away,” I said looking contemptuously at Pushkar, “If someone sees your ogre-like Mahadevji’s face at night, he will have nightmares all night.”

“And your…your Mustan Shahji and that fatso holy-man who visit your place like dacoits every Thursday …I piss in my pants with fear just looking at them,” Pushkar retorted circling his finger in the air.

“You are an infidel, Pushkar, a kafir” I said with a tone of a mualvi, “you will go to hell, the angels will stick hot burning rods against your flesh, beat you up with whips made of fire, and you will be eating and drinking pus and blood.”

“Yuk. What filthy things to say. You make me throw up. I will throw that filth back on the face of your angels. If I am a kafir than you are a kafirini. You told my Babuji the other day that you’ll marry me. You’ll then get beat up pretty good in hell as well.”

“Yeah, right! I am a Muslim and you are a Hindu. No, sir, all Muslims will go to heaven and so will I. You’ll be the only one left over, you’ll see.”

“Yeah, like I’ll be left over! I’ll go to a better place than you. You are a Muslimanti and will burn in our hell.”

“You swine. You called me a Muslimanti. You are a janitor…a kafir…idiot.”

“You are a janitor yourself, and a kafirini.”

I slapped his face. But he didn’t stand back. He not only hit me a couple of times with his fist, he twisted my arm as well. I penetrated my fingernail in his wrist so hard that I could see the white fat under his skin. Hearing all that noise, Pushkar’s mother, Chachi, came out running to stop the fight.

“Wait till your Babuji comes home, Pushkar. He will take care of you real well,” Chachi made a fist pointing to Pushkar who was by now sitting on the wall as if on a horse, making faces at me.

“Chachi,” I said crying, “I’ll now not marry this swine.”

“And as if I’d marry someone as dark as you. Ma, she makes me eat pus and blood…eeeyuk,” Pushkar made a face as if he’s going to throw up.

“Hai Ram. Shut up you disgusting boy.”

“I’m telling you the truth, Ma. She says all Hindus will go to hell while she will go to heaven.”

“No Chachi will not go, nor would Babuji or bhaiya, but this idiot will,” I said very confidently.

“If I go, I’ll bring you with me pulling you by your leg.”

“You wish! I’ll bite you so hard you’ll die.”

Chachi turned red laughing, “You two will fight in hell as well, and when Munni kills him, he’ll go away from hell.”

“Even then he’ll go to hell, Chachi, you’ll see. He’s so mean.”

“You see, Ma. I’m going to hit her with a stone.”

“What’s going on,” said Babuji, walking in and closing his umbrella.

“Hindu-Muslim riot,” said Chachi, laughing.

On seeing Babuji, scaredy-cat Pushkar ran away. Showering me with kisses, Chachi took me inside her house and let me eat her most delicious lintel soup. Chachi is a Muslim, I thought to myself, it’s Pushkar that’s kafir.

Soon Diwali arrived and Pushkar’s house lit up with little lamps. That day I made up with Pushkar immediately. All day long I ate sugar-toys and made with cotton filaments for the little lamps. Chachi screamed at me all day saying I wasn’t doing it right. But I didn’t listen to her. Pushkar came out in the evening all dressed up: his dhoti white as foam, red shirt, red-dot on his forehead. Chachi, wearing her Banarsi sari and her bangles clicking, was going around taking care of those little lamps. Pushkar was like guarding everything in his house. Today he was a fundamentalist Hindu and was staying away from me as if I were something filthy not to be touched. The same greedy Pushkar who had eaten my half-eaten berries hundreds of times today offered me a fried-bread from a distance. I felt very hurt.

“Pushkar, put some sparkle-powder on me also,” I said to Pushkar, reminding him of my old favors.

“No way,” he said arrogantly, “you are not a Hindu.”

“No Pushkar, I’m now a Hindu. Just don’t tell this to my mother, okay.”

He probably felt sorry for me, so, very attentively and carefully, he put sparkle-powder on me.

I got my revenge on Eid, however. I called Pushkar a kafir and stopped talking to him. But when my hands and feet turned fire-red with henna, I waited for him impatiently. When I saw him coming, I quickly sat down and put my red hands on my laps, pretending not to notice him.

“Aha, Munni, look at your hands! They are so red! Can I see?”

I hit his hand, “Move away, this is our Eid, not yours. You don’t fast in Ramazan. When Muslims fast they celebrate Eid.”

“You don’t fast!”

“Oh, yes, I do…from one side of my mouth.”

“Yeah! Like that is fasting! You chomp food all day as if there is no tomorrow. I can fast from one side of my mouth like that too. Big deal.”

“You are a Hindu,” I threw the last trump card.

“So what.” He felt like an idiot.

“I will wear new clothes tomorrow,” I said pretentiously.

“I’ll wear my new coat too.”

“You are a Hindu. Why should you wear new clothes on our Eid. We will also not let you eat our sweet vermicelli.”

“You came over in our Diwali, stuffed yourself with our food, had me put sparkle-powder on you, conned Babuji in giving you toys, and now you talk like this. You’re so wicked.”

I quarreled with Pushkar and forced him to leave. But as soon as I changed my clothes, I had to show him that to impress him.

Looking like a blown-up balloon in my new shiny clothes, I went to see Pushkar. When he saw me he not only forgot his anger, he started begging me. I kept explaining to him that he is a Hindu and therefore has no right to be happy at our Eid.

Disappointed, he said, “Alright, I’ll become a Muslim. But don’t tell anyone.”

But that iniquitous man turned kafir again when Holi arrived. Now it was his turn, and despite my relentless pleading he refused to play Holi with me.

“You are a Muslimanti,” he said.

“Okay, Pushkar, I’ll beat the crap out of you at Eid. You won’t forget,” I said shaking my head.

“So become a Hindu,” turning away, said that punditji callously.

“Okay, rub color on my cheek.”

“You said the other day that whichever part of your body gets Holi color, that part will go to hell. Why do you want the color now?”

“I’m now a Hindu,” I said, convinced.

“Hey, wicked you. You become a Hindu every time, then you turn right back and become a Muslim. You have to promise me you won’t turn back to being a Muslim again.”

“Okay.”

“And you’ll marry me. You agree?”

I agreed even to his last condition. But forget about Eid, I became a Muslim way before that, on Moharram, and called him the son of Yazeed because he was a hell-bound infidel.

The Pundit is such an innocent caste; especially the Kashmiri pundits are such angels. Here I’ll hit Pushkar, and there he’ll make-up with me right away. And he was such a coward that he’d start to cry when he’d see a goat wriggle with pain when slaughtered.

“Hey, why does your father kill so many goats?” he asked with astonishment, opening his big eyes wide.

“You idiot, that’s a blessing,” I said as if a scholar, making fun of his crying.

“That’s a blessing! Slaughtering goats is blessing?”

“Of course it is. When we go to paradise we will ride on these very goats through the Sirat Bridge. Pushkar, we’ll go striding and you’ll be left behind.”

“I’ll ride my bike through the bridge.”

I got burnt. “Oh, yeah! The Sirat Bridge is thinner than a hair-strand and sharper than a sword’s edge. You’ll fall right into hell, but we’ll ride tuk tuk on these goats right through the bridge.”

“I’ll sit with you on your goat.”

“I’ll push you off.”

“No, I’ll push you off.”

“How would you push me off,” I said slapping his face.

He pushed me to the ground, hit me a couple of times, and left. It broke my heart to see my glass-bangles all broken. With the top of my lungs, I cried so hard that poor Babuji went to the store right away and got me new ones.

Many Eids and Holis passed. With time, thoughts also changed. We sort of understood the philosophy of religion. Pushkar would pour buckets of colored-water on me at Holi and rub dry color on my cheek. On my birthday he gave me a marble statue of Krishna under whose feet there was a small picture frame with Pushkar’s picture in it. I kept that statue and the picture on my table, and would at times look at them intently.

Pushkar went off to college in Banaras, and me to Aligarh. Our colleges closed at different times, so we didn’t get to see each other at either Eid or Holi. Thank God for December. Sometimes it brings such pleasant surprises. I was lying down in the veranda reading a book when I heard a loud “Muslimanti,” letting me know that it was Pushkar. I greeted him with a “Kafir.” He rubbed color on my cheek.

“Holi in December!” I said pushing him away.

“Yes, I saved this color for you for Holi. Aren’t you going to offer me sweet vermicelli?

“No way. You are a kafir!”

“And you are a kafirini. You remember your childhood Holi?”

“Which one?” I said, squinting.

“Don’t show off. Didn’t you promise you’d marry me.”

“Get out, you insolent!”

“Don’t act now.”

We both started to laugh.

“I heard Mussolini has been very hard on you people.” Pushkar was always taking cheap shots at my dark skin.

“Worry about yourself English rat. I heard one can get six pennies for a white rat like you.” I attacked on his fair skin.

We talked about Hindu-Muslim riots for a while, then I said, “You are a Hindu. Go away from this place, or someone might stab you.”

“I’m a poor coward. You are the brave one. You must have eaten hundreds of goats.”

“But Pushkar, you are not a goat, you are a bull.”

I fluttered with pain he bit me so hard on my arm.

“I would’ve married you if you weren’t black as the bottom of a frying pan.”

“Oh, please, Pushkar. I’m not black as the bottom of a frying pan.”

“So you mean I should marry you,” he said with twinkles in his eyes.

“Shut up, kafir!”

“You know what poets mean by a kafir?”

“That kafir is a lover. You are a Hindu jackass.”

“Are Hindu and Muslim jackasses any different? How about Jewish jackasses?”

We started to laugh comparing different religions and different types of donkeys.

Time kept passing. Pushkar became a Deputy Collector and got stationed near we lived. He would come in his car on Sundays. He kept reminding me of that childhood Holi day, but I asked him to stop talking nonsense.

“Why do you keep scaring me like that? I’ll talk to Ma about it today. I don’t care if a riot breaks out. You are such a coward.”

“Pushkar, people will beat the hell out of us. My father would cut open my stomach.”

“This kind of talk doesn’t scare me. How long are we going to wait for someone to come down the sky to help us out.”

“Pushkar, we are talking about a taboo. There’s huge gulf between us…of religion.”

“To hell with religion. This religion thing is neither to our benefit nor we are sacrificial lambs to it.”

“You should see the love of my and your father for us. It’s about their honor in this town. Our marriage will be a humiliation for them. Newspapers that don’t have anything valuable to say will print our pictures, talk about the stories of our unbridled love, and will throw so much muck on us that we’d find it difficult to live. To marry outside one’s religion is not only a crime it’s a catastrophe. Our society allows the boys to marry a Hindu or a Christian, or whomever they want to. But the girls don’t have that freedom. And even today they say proudly that a Muslim girl should not marry a Christian. I don’t know how much that pride is justified.”

“But I am ready to convert to a Muslim.”

“So what. Besides, I won’t agree to your conversion. For me, you becoming a Muslim will not make any difference. You’ll remain the same scoundrel you are. Liking someone and religion have nothing to do with each other.”

“Then you become a Hindu.”

“Think before you say something like that. If I tell anyone that you want to turn me into an apostate, the neighborhood butchers will cut you up in small pieces. Secondly, if I became a Hindu, even my plastic-like nose will not remain in one piece. Us girls are slaves, Pushkar. There’s nothing we own. We are properties of our society. It can do to us whatever it wants to. There is nothing we can do no matter how much we desire it.”

“This is all nonsense. I don’t know. Your brother married a Christian even though he already has a wife. I have seen that woman go to a Church, and your brother too.”

“Pushkar, that woman is white, and you are a pundit, and me, as you say, a Muslimanti. You do the math!”

Pushkar started to walk back and forth impatiently, “I’ll cut this society into pieces. Listen, we will get Civil Marriage today.”

“There is no point in talking nonsense. You know how upset my father will be, and your people will starve you to death.”

“Then what should we do? Tell me the truth. Are you fooling me and marrying that rogue Hameed? Remember, I’ll get that Khan Sahib beat up so bad that he’ll forget everything. I’ll confiscate his property. Look, if we stay scared like this our lives will be ruined.”

“You are really a mad man. Let me think about it. Maybe God will show us the way.”

“God is not going to show you the way, I will. When you get near the court, turn right, the road is straight ahead.”

“And when we come back, my father’s sandals will greet us.”

“Why come back. We’ll go on a tour from there.”

“Then everyone would say that I ran away.”

“No, they will say I ran away…with you. Now, get up quickly. What’s this money called meher that groom promises the bride in Muslims in case of divorce? I’ll get it registered.”

“I’ll give you meher. My salary is only a little bit less than yours.”

“Alright then. Get up and get me meher.”

“But we’ll get divorced whenever we’d want to.”

“You forget that you fight with me all the time. Within minutes you’ll divorce me seven times. Let’s go. Change your sari.”

“How about my rubber nose!”

“We’ll get you an elongated one. By the way, yours is totally flat.”

“I’m not going then,” I said holding tight on to the door.

“Oh, yes, you are,” he said pulling me away.

A little later, we were going on the straight road that was on the right hand side near the court.

“We can still go back,” I whispered in Pushkar’s ear.

“Really,” he said earnestly.

I shook my head, God knows whether negatively or affirmatively, or it was Pushkar who shook my head.

“Kafir!” I said, piercing my fingernail in his wrist.

“A poet’s?”

I shook my head, only this time it was in agreement