When he Asked His friend to take up his Hobby

           SHAMS AFIF SIDDIQI

‘‘Life sometimes leads you to a precipice,’ Zahid spoke like a philosopher though he was actually a realist. ‘You need not tumble down,’ he smiled at his young friend sitting on the other side of the table. ‘I will tell you how to cope with it. It will work.’ He frantically looked for the waiter over the innumerable heads walking through the aisle of the sprawling café hall. He was abnormally tall and looked tough like iron. People loved to see his physique; but they could not penetrate his gifted mind. ‘Its ten minutes already,’ he spoke to himself. ‘When the coffee arrives we’ll have to order another plate of pakoras.’ This time he spoke to no one. He threw his body down on the chair and sighed. The chair wilted under the weight and its steel legs screeched in pain. The old table wobbled before his elbows touched the surface as if anticipating it before hand. ‘Our snacks must have been digested by now,’ he laughed at his own words.

Jamil looked glum. He was in no mood to smile. He looked like a statue sketched on stone. His glassy eyes were like the character in Duchess of Malfi, thinking of something attacking him from behind.

There had been an abnormal rush at the café when it opened after the lockdown. Even an army of waiters failed to cater to customers. It served snacks and coffee, picked, as they said, directly from the south of India. There were five rows of tables and three aisles in the hall of the building that once must have been the abode of a zamindar. Customers did not mind walking up the two floors on the wooden staircases. It gave the place an ethnic touch. More than coffee they came here to gossip, sort out problems and sit for hours. The six months of lockdown had ruined businesses and other aspects of life beyond imagination. So when things limped back to normal people flocked as wild geese towards warmer destinations.

 He wanted to help his friend come out of the mire he was stuck in. The young man had come to take his advice. But he was waiting for the special coffee in order to begin his conversation. Somehow the beverage would go straight to his head and make the words tumble out with ease. Otherwise he would misfire.

‘Follow my advice, you can forget the world,’ he looked at the man who was ten years younger, ‘if not…’

Jamil looked askance as one woken up from slumber. His quiet figure hunched over the table had turned into a question mark. He did not want anything disastrous any more. He would not be able to stomach it.

‘What do you mean?’ His words were hardly audible even to his own ears.

‘The world forgets you… leaves you alone to lick your own wounds….’ Zahid replied. But soon he put his fingers on his lips trying to stop the words. He was turned into a figure of discomfiture.

Jamil went on blinking like the traffic signal that had gone out of order.

The words hurt him as the action of his wife had done two days ago. The wounds had been fresh; the reference to it was like making him stare at the gaping gashes of his heart.

 The waiter came along, acted like a trapeze artist, skirting through the crowd and balancing the cups on his tray. He laid the two cups on the table, bowed for no reason before melting into the crowd again.

‘That’s what I like about the place!’ Zahid laughed again. He blew air over the cup to cool it, took a sip and began. The beverage seemed to have had its effect.

‘What did your wife say when she left you?’ he asked his friend.

Jamil wringed his hands as if he was sitting before the Principal of his school. The manner of the man was leading him from affront to injury. He swallowed the hard glob of phlegm. His confused state of mind was becoming befuddled further as stagnant pond waters get muddied when churned with a bamboo.

The tall man sometime could be the cause for embarrassment.

But Zahid wanted to help the young man out of the dilemma his wife had pushed him after five years of married life. They had been the ideal couple in the neighborhood. He was not surprised when last year the best couple award of the TV show was given to them. But life’s surprises can throw one off guard. She ran away with another man leaving her husband like a helpless child lost in the crowded market.

‘Does that matter?’ Jamil replied more to himself than to his friend.

 Jamil’s bemused state of mind failed to make him understand whether he was sad or angry after his wife left him. For the first time he understood that sadness and anger can get merged into one another. Or was it that other feelings too were waiting in the wings to enter and make a cocktail of his emotions. For a moment he had wanted to kill someone. He did not know who?

‘Not that it does. Just like that.’

‘Forget about her,’ Jamil said with wide eyes. They were neither wet nor bowed down with sorrow. Probably the pinnacle of helplessness dries up tears. ‘I want to forget the entire episode,’ he wiped his forehead with bare hands.

The thoughts of her made him sweat again. Though he said he wanted to forget her, he knew he was lying. Every little item of the household was her reminder. Even the breeze brought back scents of her persona to his mind. The more he ran away from her thoughts, the more they teased him.

She was tall and fair skinned because her mother was English and father, an upcountry gentleman. Her eyes were sliced mango pieces; aquiline nose that tipped with accuracy and her well set lips on a face which posed a challenge to artists was something that had made him fall in love. They had spent holidays in London, Paris and Amsterdam. He loved Darjeeling from where the sun peeped through the Kanchenjunga every morning. He never failed to see the sunrise from the Shrubbery Park behind the Governor’s House. But her favourite vacation spot was Kerala, God’s own country. He was not averse to her habit of mixing with men but failed to understand what she saw in the man whom even the village girls would love to hate.

 ‘I am sorry,’ Zahid said thoughtfully, ‘If that pains you….’  

‘You wanted to tell me how to cope with the situation,’ Jamil cut him short.

‘I am neither a doctor nor a psychiatrist,’ Zahid reached out to him with a fatherly touch. ’But I can tell you something from my experience of life.’

‘Please,’ Jamil said in a disinterested voice. He closed his eyes and image of her departure invaded parts of the brain making the skin feel the prick of pain. When his mind was at rest, his whole body would think.

Zahid took another sip of the coffee with a satisfying slurp.

A man on the other table stared with a detestable look.

Jamil looked at the bubbles stuck on his friend’s lips. But the tall man dipped a spoon in his cup as if expecting the contents to part like the river Nile during the time of Moses.

Jamil smiled for the first time as he stared at the weird man.

 Zahid was taller than him by three inches, his torso rose above the crest of the chair and his swan like neck gave him an ungainly look. The reason why he liked the man was his quiet manner of deliberation and thoughts that sometimes verged on the philosophical side. He words had to be believed.

‘I feel bad,’ Zahid said looking pensive; a Greek sculpture with brooding eyes. Then he looked up but though staring at the rows of tables, he was looking far beyond. ‘Had I been in your place,’ the words dropped unhurriedly as if refusing to come out. ‘I would have gone mad.’ He waited for the lull period to be over and then added. ‘You may find it awkward. Call it funny. Or say whatever you like. But I know it can bring peace to a battered soul. It did to me when all my siblings went against me and succeeded in disinheriting me from my share of paternal property.’

‘What!’ Jamil’s face turned into an exclamation mark. ‘I never knew that.’

Though he used the words with sympathy they were devoid of feeling. He failed to connect with the man. Today nothing seemed to affect him except his own thought of loss. He shook his head and yet failed to come out of his entangled thoughts. His mind was like a hardboiled egg, nothing could pierce it.

‘I hope you understand,’ Zahid said and he left it midway for his mind was inevitably wandering away.

Zahid was thinking of the night when he was disinherited from the paternal property that did not even belong to his father. It was a two storey house passed on by his great grandmother to his grandmother and finally to him, the eldest, according to the tradition of the family. But it was wrenched away from him on a fateful night. His siblings succeeded in making his father believe that a son with a good job does not need the share of the ancestral property. The night was stormy but the tempest in his mind failed to let him sleep. He was alone and his mind tortured him like a cat playing with a mouse. He had entered a tunnel both ends of which were pitch dark. Then out of nowhere the words of some forgotten song came to his mind. He began humming in his dull voice and the room resonated with music: ‘When things go wrong, when nothing seems to work, I know that you are there / When all do leave, when the world betrays, I know your love will sustain…’

That day he realized words had power and when given a dress of melody it can move the hills. It gave him courage; something emerged to soothe and thrill. Though unseen a divine force offered a hand. The next day he edged a bit further towards it. He picked up his unused guitar and started playing a lost music that now rocks the world. He had mesmerized two generations, amassed money to look after his family and build two houses in different parts of the city. Words welded into the network of music work wonders.

‘Carry on,’ said Jamil shook the man

‘Take up a hobby,’ Zahid changed the topic. ‘My hobby…’ he smiled sheepishly.

‘Hobby!’ Jamil shouted, his voice merging into the chaotic sounds of the hall.

The man on the opposite table banged his head with both hands. He hollered for a waiter.

‘Do you think we are still at school? I have lost my …’, But then he stopped. His eyes looked bowed down with thoughts.

‘Zahid must either be mad or he thinks I am,’ Jamil ruminated.

Shakila had gone out of his life but not out of his mind. In these five years of married life she had planned not to have a child. He believed her words. She worked in a five star hotel, he did not mind. She was used to having the best things of life; he arranged things for her. When she avoided him he knew something was wrong. But he was helpless. If someone has made up her mind, you can do nothing about it. So when everything was shut during the six months, he knew, they were having hushed meetings. The lockdown had ruined businesses; it had ruined his life.

‘What’ wrong with it?’ Zahid broke in. ‘It is not a hobby for kids. It’s more precious than gemstones and priceless like dreams. Music is close to divinity…’

Jamil didn’t think it fit to reply. He did not want to hurt his friend. He had expected something practical from him. He wanted the man to go and talk to his wife; make her see reason. Instead the man was giving him a lecture like a college professor.

‘Music? Jamil ultimately managed to say. ‘You want me to play music when I am bleeding, attacked by a lioness?’

‘No one can come close to Divinity,’ Zahid went on as if in a trance. ‘But man can feel a flash of it, even if it is for a moment. The hermit does it through meditation on the hills; the religious man through prayers, artists in art and musician through the strings when he moves his fingers...’

Jamil frowned like an owl ready to pounce on its victim.

Zahid didn’t see his face. He went on speaking, lost in his self.

‘Who knows music could be closest to Truth. Scientists say earth and the universe were created with a Bang. That must have been the beginning of rhythmic sound. Music is a fusion of rhythm, melody and harmony.’

Jamil disinterestedly looked around the place. He spotted the man of the next table having a heated exchange with a waiter. He felt bad for the poor man. .

‘When you move fingers,’ Zahid said, ‘through the chords and the sound emanates therein you have a glimpse of the truth. It lasts for a moment suspending you between existence and non- existence.’ His eyes were wide open as if he could see his words tumbling down. ‘That moment you rise above the petty squabbles of humanity. My friend rise above these! They do not give you anything.’

‘Zahid,’ Jamil said tugging him hard. ‘Have your coffee.’

Zahid shook himself as if waking up from a dream. His fair face looked crimson. He exhaled through the nose like a bull before the charge. But soon the face got back its normal colour. He knew how to control himself.

‘I am sorry…’Jamil tried to undo the damage.

Zahid stared at the table. But his mind wandered and he spoke to himself: ‘I was going to tell you a secret. It could have transferred you from the state of man to something else. I wanted you to retrieve yourself, rather than the one that has left. We remain removed from ourselves in our day to day life. It’s time for recovery of that self; easiest and most difficult of all things…’

‘Carry on,’ Jamil spoke like a kid. ‘You were saying something,’

 ‘Let us go,’ Zahid said.

‘Have your coffee.’

‘It has run cold, lost its taste,’ Zahid said aloud.

He stood up like a camel. Heads from tables moved involuntary to look at him. But he walked away with his head thrown down his shoulders. Jamil walked behind him and the sound of his feet on the wooden floor seemed jarring to the ears.

                                     BY: SHAMS AFIF SIDDIQI