Bajwa Has Nothing More to Say Now

BAJWA ARRIVES. I’ve been waiting. He sits for a bit. When the mosquitoes start biting his feet, he says, “Shall we go?”

After days and days of phoning each other, we had finally fixed a meeting at our old coffee house on Lahore’s Mall Road. But it wasn’t really ours anymore. It had become something entirely new, with a strange face. This was one of our last meetings, when the pleasure of meetings was running low.

The Sufi Fakeer Lal Shah says, “The population has increased, but our meetings have decreased.”

There was a time when one wouldn’t even think of going home at night, even after midnight.

SOME TIME AGO, while passing along Mall Road, I stopped at the old coffee house, just by chance. That was also a last meeting of sorts. Sometimes the relationships we hold onto become mysterious, and sometimes the mysteries of life themselves become our companions. Most of our journey in this world is in the piercing, naked sunshine. The few companions we find, they are the soft shadows cast by high clouds floating above in the brightness. How empty the bare light is, how inhospitable.

The clouds cast their shadow for a moment on a bird floating on the waves of water, and then pass away. Not everything can be remembered, but the smouldering of reminiscence remains. Sometimes it stops you right in your tracks.

I SIT DOWN in the café and don’t even bother to order tea. Where are those evenings at Mall Road now? Today the black of the night is deeper than soot, and my breath is choked with the fumes of cars. But the mist of remembrance stirs a breath of fresh air amidst the dust.

Uncle Political, as he was called, recognizes me and brings two cups of tea without asking. He figures Bajwa will be here any moment; the second cup is for him.

Of course, if he did come, he wouldn’t stay.

“Do not concern yourself with the beloved . . . Do not fall in love,” Mitto, the drunkard, always says, gulping a third drink.

This city crawls up my back like a red ant.

IN THE OLD DAYS, Lahore was not so crowded. One could just happen upon an acquaintance on the road. Even people I didn’t know seemed familiar in those days. There wasn’t any sense of strangeness in the eyes. At the same time, there was no burden of an existing bond. Where did they come from, those emerging relationships, and how were they formed?

“Leave them, throw away all those ties to your heart,” the Sufi says. God knows how much Mitto and Chaudhary are going to drink today.

IFFI CHATTA comes to mind—places like this bear the scent of him. Iffi was my best friend in sixth grade. We went to school together. Every day when we were free I took him around on my bike. He was white like kheer rice pudding. His father was a police officer in another city and seldom came home; it was rumoured that he kept another woman on the side. Iffi spent most of his time with me, and at night I would drop him home. His house was in the second or third street of our mohallah. His mother used to say, “Yes, take him, take him, you are someone to play with. Poor thing.” I would ride the bicycle and he would pay a fare: four annas per hour. I had become a big man just like that, though I did make concessions in my fee along the way.

What was school to us? We were not meant to become doctors or engineers. When we passed a class, we moved on to the next. No one pushed us in school, and we didn’t make any effort when we got home. When exams were around the corner, we would get a beating from our elders, so we would read a word or two and would pass.

Iffi stuck to me like glue. I couldn’t even look after myself, yet he looked to me for shelter. The other boys would pass us by, pinching his cheek hard, and he would cling closer; he was devoted to me. But I became tired of riding the bicycle. I didn’t understand what his company meant. When he was the butt of the other boys’ jokes, I would sometimes join them. I was his friend, but I wasn’t loyal. Then the end came. Faiqi slapped his bottom and gave me a push, saying, “Wa, what a pair!”

I responded with a shallow, evasive laugh.

“You should have slapped his face!” Iffi declared. But he knew that it wasn’t possible for me to give the same back to them. After that, he didn’t speak with me anymore. He flat out refused. And, after eighth grade, he left school once and for all.

The tragedy of humankind is that when things unveil themselves in the dust, it is too late. I could not forget Iffi, and even in my old age I still remember that street where his house was. Whenever I go to the mohallah, I make sure to pass by. I have wandered through it again and again but have never seen him. His street ended at a dead end, and so it still does today. The road is the same, and his house is the same. But where is he?

A WHILE BACK my daughter returned to school after summer vacation and came home crying. She wouldn’t tell us what was the matter. She was in seventh grade and was a star student, yet every day she came home in tears and wouldn’t discuss it. We couldn’t bear to see her weeping. Then suddenly she stopped. And she changed. She appeared a bit older; she had more confidence about her. After some time, my wife told me that our daughter had quarrelled with her best friend. Her friend had become close with another girl and had dropped her. Our daughter implored her friend, but she would not relent. So she gave up, once and for all, and made a new group of friends. After settling in with her new group, she forgot everything. But it all made her a bit harder.

Why does it happen so? People stay in their groups, but then something happens and it falls apart. Why is that?

It’s evening on Mall Road. A flock of birds hovers over the High Court. The dark red bricks appear suddenly, like wild pigeons, and melt in a cloud into the grey evening. The smouldering burn of memory descends through a dark, half-open window like a drop of moisture in the late winter air of Phagun. I have experienced this air many times. It has swept through my body time and again, and I have borne it each time.

BAJWA WORE a homespun kurta and traditional open leather sandals. He looked like a poet, but he wasn’t and never would be. He was sitting in a corner with Comrade T. T. “Comrade T. T.” had been called by various names, first “Comrade Raidva” or Radio, and then “Wireless.” Finally, the name “Comrade Table Talker” stuck to him. Later, that was shortened to “T. T.” You see, he once contended that the real thing is to be a master “table talker.” He used to say that Lenin and Mao Zedong were actually just great table talkers and that all the successful revolutions in the world had been led by such masters. He used to say that, in order to be a good table talker, it was vital that one listen to others carefully, to discover the contradictions in their ideas. Then one should grab those contradictions and play with them. From then on, he became Comrade T. T.

It was Bajwa’s first visit to the coffee house; soon the rest of the group would stream in. Comrade T. T. would finish his cigarettes and then it would be time to get some more. Sometimes the whole story got stuck at this point, when someone had to stand up and bring the cigarettes, or when someone had to walk to the counter to ask for tea. At some point, the one who stood up and went felt that he was being looked down upon, and he became irritated. Then he also became the butt of jokes. But Comrade T. T. was never short of people to bring cigarettes for him, and by the time one of his followers started to feel the shallowness of his thesis, the Comrade would have found someone else. He always made friends with people younger than him and educated them. As soon as they became a bit wiser, the first thing they would do is begin to argue with him. His opponents said that he tried to own his friends, didn’t meet them on equal footing. He treated them as if they were his pigeons. He took care of them, fostered them, and gave them food. But they didn’t return to his roof when he let them fly.

I felt sad for the newcomer. His years seemed to have passed prematurely. He was young but his lips were already darkening from cheap cigarettes. I was at that point planning to leave the group anyway. Comrade T. T. did not want me around. The repetitive, monotonous talks were new only for him. None of it really mattered to him anyway: he had escaped from home and from the narrow behaviours of the parties. He just wanted to be a leading talker. As Bajwa stood up to fetch cigarettes, I offered him one of mine. He hesitated, took one and impulsively sat at my table for a while. Comrade T. T. glared at me with red eyes. It was my last day in that café.

I DIDN’T HAVE TO wait long; Bajwa met me in the old Anarkali Bazaar after just a few days. He lived somewhere near the leather market. Even though his father was a government servant in some department, he looked just like us. I advised to him to be serious and continue his studies, but he kept talking and talking. We went to watch a movie, became friends and remained that way. He wanted to make a “somebody” out of me: I was maybe a step or two ahead in school, and a bit senior to him in the political gatherings. I knew some people before him. But we were both alone and were destined to be friends.

We did everything together, all through those last days of our youth. Friendship, enmities, and politics: these were all the same to us, and we faced them together. People spoke of us in the same breath. We met every day, and night would melt into day again. We were one. One night, after Zia-ul-Haq imposed martial law, someone from the banned Communist Party gave us a thousand pamphlets to throw in every shop on Mall Road. When we finished our rounds, we headed home early in the morning. We weren’t frightened at all. During the pro-democracy demonstrations near Anarkali Bazaar on Mall Road, a policeman held me by the collar and started dragging me away. All around us, the lathi charge was going on and there were people and bodies everywhere. It was Bajwa who freed me from the policeman with a jerk and helped me to escape; then he too fled. That police officer chased us up to the old Zamzama Cannon, once used by Maharaja Ranjit Singh and mentioned in Kipling’s Kim, in the centre of the city. But when he saw the crowd moving against him, he turned back.

Then suddenly Bajwa became angry and stopped talking with me. He just disappeared. Its true, I was a little bitter in those days. But it never occurred to me that he would leave me. I kept hoping and expecting that he would come back. How could he live without me? I am his shadow, his other half. He is not complete without me.

“Friendship is an unscientific relation. It is undialectical,” the Master says.

“Friendship is in being there. It is in showing up,” says Rang Shah.

THE WINDOW SEEMS to be closing. The night is getting darker. There is no place to sit near Regal Chowk Square. The Mall Luxury, Lord’s—all the coffee houses have long since closed. The streets of this city have made me sick; in a corner of the city, somewhere, the shadows of sunken memories continue to flicker like a small flame.

Why had he cut me off? Many things had happened, perhaps, to bring it about. We were equally educated, but I got a job, and he didn’t. Perhaps he wasn’t angry; maybe he just realized that our time was over, that we had lost the time in which we shared everything we had. Everything had changed: the times, people, and places. And so the city and friends would have to be changed, too. He became silent most of the time and would talk only in close gatherings or with one or two people. Somebody would remind us, “Listen to him, too,” but who had the time to listen to others? One had to fight to speak, always cutting somebody else short.

It was as if he had been left behind. He didn’t complete his studies on time: when I had become the father of a child, he was still in university. The girl met him there, and she changed his life completely. She married him but took no pride in him. But I shouldn’t talk like that: a man can only be happy with a woman. He must concede to her. I thought that he would share his new life with me, but he didn’t. So, a gap grew between us. For some time, he did come see me, and his wife somehow opened up a bit too. But it was at just that point that everything was lost. I didn’t know what happened, but soon he stopped meeting me once and for all. It looked as if his wife had forbidden him to see me. Once or twice I tried to call his wife on the phone, but she hung up.

When I thought about it, I realized that all this might have been because of Mitto and Murshid, with whom I had begun to drink a lot. After his marriage, whenever he drank, Bajwa would go home chewing paan to hide the scent. I was furious and thought, what kind of a love marriage was it, if a man had to hide such things from his wife?

And then who knows what happened, but the whole city changed. Our friends left, and so many years slipped from our hands, like how a traveller sitting in a night train doesn’t know how many cities have been left behind. Seasons changed one after another. But I couldn’t forget him. His memory left a subtle pain, a scar on my heart. I was a lonely soul with only empty days before me. Why did he leave me? Sometimes while passing through the city I would imagine him: he is right over there, riding a motorcycle, but unrecognizable because of his helmet. He used to go to political gatherings, so I thought we might meet at one and chat. But he couldn’t be found. Someone told me that he had washed his hands of everything. His hair was gone now, and he looked old.

NOT TOO LONG BACK, when the lawyers’ movement was emerging, I too joined the demonstrations with a couple of friends. Old habits die hard. We gathered on Mall Road and shouted slogans condemning those in power at the Lahore High Court and Charing Cross, and then dispersed. Our old lawyer friends had called us to join them: they thought that the dice had finally been cast in our favour. One day we joined the procession in the hottest hour of the day. The female lawyers were wearing black glasses and holding umbrellas; everyone carried bottles of mineral water. But the vigour of the slogans was no less strong.

After crossing Regal Chowk Square, we surged forward, and saw a crowd of people and journalists at the overhead bridge of the Panorama Shopping Centre. They were waiting there with flowers in their hands, and when the procession passed under the bridge, they scattered a rain of flowers over it. From the end of procession, I could see the people throwing flowers from above. All at once, I saw Bajwa among them. Was it him, or someone else? It looked just like him from a distance. He was holding a huge basket of flowers and was slowly throwing them over the people passing under the bridge. He appeared thin and weak. I waved my hands, recognizing him from far away; he threw flowers over us when we passed. The flowers clung to my hair and the petals slipped in my pocket. I didn’t brush them off. I dreamt of Bajwa’s flowers for many days after that: I am passing under a bridge and Bajwa is throwing flowers from above.

A life has passed but the fragrance of Bajwa’s flowers still hangs in the air.