Shariq was a good worker (he managed high rise construction
sites), friend (nobody bought you more drinks than him) and husband (Raunak
felt a certain warmth when she considered that he was hers). In all likelihood,
he would have made a good father as well. But we shall never know.
Five days after the dinner to celebrate Raunak being with
child, (‘Nothing short of Zeeshan’s biryani and Tunda’s kebabs will make the
cut, my dear’, he had said, ‘so please don’t even think about cooking...’), a
wind had swept him off the eighth floor of a construction site.
Raunak got a job teaching children English Literature in a
school so her in-laws wouldn’t have to worry too much. She spent her days
teaching children to love stories. And nights, loving them herself.
After a few months of telling other people’s stories, she
tried telling one herself. And she realized that she enjoyed it. It felt so
good. And the class, a bunch of troublesome eight year olds, seemed to enjoy it
(the class hadn’t ever been so silent).
That moment on, she took to telling stories with a flourish.
She spent her classes telling them, her gossip sessions concocting them and her
excuses manufacturing them. So when her six year old, Zulfiqar, finally asked
where his father was, she knew exactly what to say.
‘Your father made tall
buildings, she said, ‘and one day, he was working on the eighth floor. This
floor, my dear Zulfi, was quite unlike the floor we’re on. This one was still
being made. Which is to say it had no floors, no walls and no roof. Only
metallic bones that kept it standing. And the wind, you feel it blowing cold on
your face now, don’t you Zulfi, gets harder the higher you go. And this is just
the first floor. Imagine how hard the wind blows on the eighth floor.’
‘Very hard’, said Zulfiqar, the beginnings of fear simmering
in his eyes.
‘Exactly’, said Raunak, ‘so that day, he was at the edge of
the building, when a blast of wind hit him…’
‘And what happened then’, asked Zulfiqar, the fear spreading
from his eyes to the rest of his face. Just yesterday, he had seen a ‘blast’ of
wind blow an earthen pot to smithereens on the floor below.
‘He flew off the building’, said Raunak, her voice flowing
like the powerful wind, ‘he saw the ground beneath him, the domes of the
Imambara, the marketplace that seemed so small, the people that seemed smaller.
He floated, for an instant, over it all…’
‘And then?’ asked Zulfiqar, eyes tearing up, voice
quivering, upcoming sentence, a foregone conclusion.
‘And then…’, she said, ‘the wind hoisted him up and swept
him away. All the way up, as a matter of fact, to the clouds.’
‘“What’s going on?” he asked.’
‘“Oh”, said the wind, “it gets a little lonely up here. So
every once in a while, I pick up a man (not just any man, oh no, but a lovely
man) to come stay with me up here.”’
‘Wow’, said Zulfiqar, his heart brimming up with the joy you
feel as nightmares turn to dreams.
‘And he had many adventures up there. But those are stories
for another day.’
And Raunak kept telling him stories about his father’s
adventures up in the clouds. Even after Zulfiqar had grown old and knew that
the stories were… well, stories. He never stopped enjoying hearing them. And
she never stopped enjoying telling them.
Several years later, Zulfiqar’s wife was taking a cab back
home, when a boulder accidentally fell on it, killing her and the driver
instantly. He broke into a loud wail as they told him. His six month old
daughter joined in, partaking in a grief she didn’t understand.
It wasn’t until several years later, when Zeenat was close
to four, that she asked where her mother was. Children, as always, were getting
older earlier.
‘She was taking a cab back home’, he said, ‘ and a boulder
fell on the cab. She died.’
Zulfiqar told stories like his mother. But quite unlike the
stories she told. His were darker. Harsher. Some said more true than they
should’ve been..
‘But her life as a ghost, he sighed, ‘that’s a different
story…’
