Chapter 2: Chapter 2
Shyam pursed his lips after slurping some tea and looked towards the road. 'you know, this is a city of vultures, you know vultures, huh?' He raised his brows to fathom my attention. 'These vultures eat only lively, smiling bodies, you don't know, kid, what world you have stepped into.'
I was belittled by this as I gulped down a sip of tea whose taste had taken over the reign of my taste buds. A regurgitating feeling caught my stomach. I was really in a state of panic after hearing about the "life hunting vultures". But I replied to soothe my inner turbulence with my calm words. 'He is my childhood friend. We used to play together when we were kids. He is a good man,' it looked I was defending my friend's character whom I was meeting after a decade or so.
'My friend, people turn here. It is a place for people to change like the climate. Here blossoms bloom into thorns and you are talking about flowers,' he laughed as he rose up to throw the disposable cup along with some tea into the nearby dustbin. 'I wish you a bit of good luck in finding your pious friend.' He sniggered and vanished.
I looked towards Rehman Chacha and he was humming and smiling. I was anxious and called my friend again. Okay, you seem annoyed about not knowing my friend's name. Well, I don't do backbiting, especially on friends, I don't expect much from them. Let's keep him anonymous. Again, his phone was switched off. I stood up, paid for the tea and went towards the juice corner. A road intersection on which a large juice shop stood, opposite to the famous meat shop that sold Halal meat but was run by two Hindu brothers, who usually sold meat wearing skull caps. The religious business is the best business when people are under the influence of their self made opium. I reached the corner and saw people wearing clothes obliterating the difference between their genders. Women, the silhouettes of their hunches I had seen for the first time, sipping the juices with rosy lips made the straws wear the same lipstick. There were men shamelessly looking towards those women, the relentlessness in their stalking was commendable and there were other men who accompanied these open treasures and were protecting them from poaching eyes of bystanders. I was amused seeing this drama of my belligerent inner self with the fantasies and ecstasies of others. I was taught by my mother not to look into some strange woman's eyes. Maybe the mothers of these stalkers had also told them so because they were only observing the figures of these female treasures. I left the place in disgust without looking at those profane women who had come into open to get slayed by the natural instincts of male eyes. I wanted to make those women disappear from this planet who don't possess a sense to dress properly for their chastity. Red-faced I trudged further. There were shops with everything to sell even the souls, people with no faces to face themselves, cars with no passengers to smile at the beggars, beggars with no shame to ask from the closed coffins carrying the soulless bodies behind the wheels, bicycles with steely and lean legs pedalling them, bastards of motorcycles and load-carriers carrying the plastic wastes, sewers with no covers, poor with unreasonable smile, rich with incessant frown. I reached another corner, a lady probably in her late fifties selling vegetables, a grocer is what she called herself, a Paytm QR code pasted on the concrete electric pole was the entry to her bank account that struggled between her inflating expenditures and deflating income. On the opposite side lay a drunk man (or a dead man I didn't know) whose mouth smooched the dusty footpath. After some time I found out his name is Faheem, and he is a permanent resident of that footpath. There was a talk that his whole family was killed by a single mosquito. But I doubt it. After all how many people a dengue-carrying mosquito can sting in one go? Whatever, after that he found solitude on the footpath. But still, he has not given up on life. He observes every Friday as dry day. He is a firm believer of God and pain but sometimes he takes a dive into numb godlessness.
A tea vendor who sold tea and coffee at the same rate told me about a paying guest facility. But it needed me to have at least 5000 rupees. I searched my pockets and could only see a 500 rupees note. I crumbled it and put it back into my pocket. 'Is any mosque, nearby?' I asked him. He looked again towards me with a renewed observation.
'From Kashmir?' he asked with a strange attitude.
I nodded as I knew my cover of being an Indian was blown up by my "mosque" question and complexion. I wondered what he would be thinking about me, obviously, a terrorist image would have flashed in his mind. A man wearing a suicide vest ready to blow his tiny shop to avenge the death of his fellow terrorists in the valley. It seemed he was waiting for me to open my jacket to show him the actual jackpot of explosives. He gave me directions to the nearby mosque which was housed in the dense neighbourhood of Hindus domesticating dogs, Muslims having cats as their pets and Christians trying to find their relevance especially at the time of elections when only Hindu and Muslim votes mattered. It was a peculiar society depicting actual India. Muslims, some natives mixed up with migrants from the neighbouring state of Uttar Pradesh. Hindus, mostly natives and some Punjabis with a sprinkle of some inevitable Bengalis and Tamilians. As one entered the society, the road tapered with every metre into the traverse. A temple stood against a church as if trying to enforce itself as the host of the incoming travellers and tenants from north as well as south. The mystical translucent aura of the festival of Diwali made the old, emaciated and asthmatic ill. The smoke from the stubble burnings done in the neighbouring agriculture driven states like Punjab and Haryana mixed up with the furious smoke of crackers took away fresh air and captured the whole study the blanket of smog.
While walking towards the Masjid I found myself in the mixed territory of practising Muslims and inconspicuous Hindus. The children played in the main street with their eyes glued to their respective smartphones. I saw doors; splintered, double shuttered, women holding doorposts to welcome the guests as if working for a brothel which served food instead of sex. Some alien faces also made me think about the diversity of the place. My ear heard different languages with different tones, males with bhenchod slur on their tongues, females with squeaking sounds as if arguing about the night when their men came home drunk. I took the first impression of this place as 'filthy'. I asked an old man who was tapping the macadamized street with his stick looking eerily at the earth as if asking for his date to enter it. He showed me the door of the mosque without looking up. With oddity, I tried to open the door but it was locked as the call for evening prayer was still to be given. I asked the old man again and he answered me with silence. With disgruntlement, I ventured further into the five-storeyed conjected colony to find a place to stay. No one gave me a place. My Kashmiri background combined with my financial crunch was enough for me to resort to homelessness.
Exhausted, I came back to Rehman chacha asked him for a place, to me he was the only, clean, pious hope to bring some respite. He gracefully asked me to lie down on the floor of the shop until I find a suitable place to rest my bun. That night after a needful weeping I slept till morning when Shaym's voice woke me up.
I saw Rehman chacha preparing tea on the sooty gas stove. The kettle had lost the aluminium lustre and was now wearing a black shade smoke. Chacha smiled, as he always did. He handed over a cup of tea to Shaym who after jumping over me sat on one of the benches. He took a sip from the cup and raised his brow to signify a hello to me. I responded aptly.
'So, your friend, he died or just died for you?' Shaym said looking unconcerned about my plight.
I wanted to answer, I wanted to defend my friend, but instead, I asked for a place to live to which he laughed. His laugh was hysterical like his annoying personality. He didn't say anything and walked away. I looked towards Chacha and he was humming a tone. It seemed I was not being heard by anybody. It looked I had been reduced to a speck for whom nobody was concerned. But then something happened and out of the blue Shaym came back and asked me to follow him. I still remember. I saw his cracked left heel drenched in blood, I wanted to ask but I didn't. He showed me this cart. That is how I started my dwelling here on this cot.
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