‘Salaam.’
‘Salaam,’ I said.
She kept studying the ball.
‘With balls like these,’ I explained, ‘the sahibs play golf on the lawns.’
Her fingers tried to squeeze the ball gently the way people squeeze fruits before buying.
‘The dimples are there for a reason,’ I said.
‘I know,’ she said.
‘You know?’
‘They make the ball go faster.’
‘Who are you?’ I asked.
She smiled but stopped short of responding to me. Outside the trees looked dark and wet and naked.
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘You are a smart woman. But there are things you do not know. And that is why you waste your tears. I have come to reveal something about myself to you. If you do not know it already, then you must get to know it,’ I said. ‘In one single breath I would like to tell you. Here. Look at my face.’
She fixed her gaze on my boots, not my face.
‘Look at my face,’ I said.
It seemed natural to do what I did next. I removed my turban. I revealed the knot of hair on my head. She raised her eyes and surveyed me curiously.
‘I have long hair.’
I don’t recall if she dropped the ball or it fell on its own from her hand. The ball bounced several times on the floor before rolling and then coming to a stop, becoming absolutely still.
My hair tumbled to my knees.
‘That is why you found the strand in the dal,’ I explained. ‘You wept for one big nothing.’
‘So they inform you of everything about me.’
‘Because I would like to know you,’ I said.
‘Liar.’
‘No.’
‘What do you want to know about me?’
‘Everything.’
She eyed my long hair with enormous curiosity. It was the first time she looked right through me.
‘There are women who envy me,’ I said, ‘because I have hair longer than theirs.’
She continued gazing at me with the same curiosity. She looked right through me, and slowly her hands unknotted the scarf on her head. Slowly she let it go.
‘Hair,’ she said.
My gaze followed the movement of the scarf as it fell on the floor.
Then I heard her forced, convulsive laughter. I raised my eyes and observed: they had shaved off her hair. She broke out laughing before she wept. Like a child. Why did they shave off her hair? I asked myself. Why did
we
shave her head?
My eyes, too, welled up. Me, wearing very long hair, and this woman mourning the loss of her hair. Her scarf on the floor, and my turban on the table. I felt as if the two
things
, the scarf and the turban, were talking to each other.
Before I walked back to the kitchen I retrieved the tape recorder from my kit and left it by her bed.
‘I am leaving this music machine for you,’ I said. ‘The top is broken, so be careful. Look at my fingers. Here. This is the button you push to play. Push the last button to eject. Like this.’
Her gaze remained fixed on the broken top.
I pressed the button.
She listened to the music. A bit startled at first, the expression on her face changed many times until she smiled. I noticed again the small insects climbing up the whitewashed wall by her bed. The insects were vibrating too. I wanted to ask her many questions, and I had imagined she would request in that Muslim Kashmiri inflection of hers ‘Play it again! Play it again!’, but listening to those sounds she fell asleep.
mein bowznaav bayyi akki latté
akki latté bayyi
bowznaav
mein
winekya . . .
Sleeping, her hand lay extended. It appeared as if her hand was drawn, there was the sense of a painting. Her hand was woven into the foreign music. When the tape stopped her breathing became audible. There was a certain contradiction between the happiness on her sleeping face and the happiness of her dreams and her unhappy waking hours. What was she dreaming of? Was it wind or water or snow?
I returned to the kitchen with her untouched plate. She didn’t eat that day. If by shaving her hair off we meant to humiliate her, we had succeeded.
In November General Sahib flew on a helicopter with the Defense Minister to inspect the two battalions on Siachen Glacier. He took me along. Kip, he said, Minister Sahib and I will inspect the troops and you inspect the kitchens on the glacier.
Yessir.
In the helicopter it was cramped. The pilot made me sit on the seat right behind Sahib. The Minister and the General talked about matters connected to the security of our country, using code words like Peak 18 or NJ9842. From one white mountain to the next we flew like an eagle and I felt an intense pressure in my balls. My vertigo was growing more and more intense. Sahib, I almost cried out to him. Sahib, I can’t take it. He didn’t hear. I focused my gaze on his polished shoes and socks, and perhaps it was his black socks which comforted me. I shut my eyes and started thinking about the kitchen trainee. Two days ago the man had come to the kitchen and on his first afternoon he had used Sahib’s charcoal black sock to strain tea. I had scolded him on the spot. Major, I did nothing wrong, he had defended himself. Major, this is how we strain tea in our village. Bewakuf!
‘Why are you laughing, Kirpal?’ demanded the General in the helicopter. In my nose was trapped the smell of dirty laundry tea.
‘Sahib, it is just that I cannot be myself in the presence of such high mountains, such everlasting snow.’
The helicopter moved up in spirals and my lungs felt the lack of air. Suddenly we fell a few hundred feet. The machine dropped altitude without warning.
‘Minister, sir, the chap lost his father during the recon operation of NJ9842,’ said the General.
‘My sympathies with you, my boy,’ said the Minister.
The helicopter landed on the glacier helipad. Siachen is the second coldest place on earth. Two senior officers whisked the General and the Minister to a special tent.
Kishen appeared out of the thick fog and cold to receive me. He had one star less and I had one star more on my epaulettes, but the whole operation was a farce. He was my senior and I his junior, but our ranks held a different meaning. Our ranks said that I was his senior and he my junior. Kishen clicked his heels and saluted me and said ‘Welcome’ and to that welcome added the word ‘sir’. I extended my hand nervously. He hesitated to shake it at first, but changed his mind and crushed my hand like cloves of garlic.
He took me inside the white arctic tent. We sat down. Wind was howling outside, flapping the canvas. The kerosene bukhari was burning. His face was visible in the flames of the bukhari. There were dark rings beneath his eyes. He suddenly appeared older than his age.
‘So you have come,’ he said.
‘Sir.’
‘Don’t call me, sir, you little . . .’
‘Can we begin the inspection?’
‘You little Sikh, you think you have come here to inspect the rat’s alley? Do we have a cockroach problem in the kitchen? Do we know how to make Japani food? What are you going to do? How are you going to start?’
‘General Sahib asked me to . . .’
‘You toady of the General.’
‘Can we begin?’
‘What begin?’
‘The General would like to know the problems in the kitchen.’
‘What problems? We got no problems.’
His mind was elsewhere. Just then a brown dog entered the tent. It shook the snow off and came to sniff me. For no reason it jumped and licked my parka. I patted its head and suggested a walk, and to my surprise Chef stood up. We muffled ourselves and stepped out, and I still recall the sound our rubber boots made on brittle ice, and the dog’s panting. Wind struck our cheeks and he kept moving his arms up and down in the air, under the sky, and we were so high up we had essentially become the sky, and he moved his gloved hands up and down in air, and said this is how in Chef Muller’s country they conducted music. I am conducting music, he said.
This music makes me think of the epic Mahabharata, he said. When they grew old the Pandavas headed towards the mountains, climbing higher and higher towards the Gates of Heaven. No one followed them, only a stray dog. The brothers fell one by one on the steep trail. Only Yudhister, the eldest, and the dog made it to the Gates. You can enter, said the gatekeeper. But the animal is not allowed in Heaven. The dog followed me all the way, protested Yudhister, my brothers gave up, but this creature was my constant companion. I will not enter alone.
‘Did he?’ I asked.
Chef was silent. He walked me through loose snow to a deep crevasse, and pointed at the seracs (on the other side), and said that the crevasse was really the mouth of the glacier, and the seracs were its white teeth. This is how the glacier eats, he said.
The dog started running around the crevasse.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said.
‘How deep is it, Chef?’
He took a pebble out of his parka and dropped it.
We heard a sound twenty seconds after the pebble was lost in the crevasse.
‘What do you think about the glacier?’
‘From the helicopter it looked like a giant man’s tongue outside his mouth, licking a woman’s navel. Siachen was a big tattoo on a pregnant belly.’
He stared at me.
‘You read my journal,’ he said.
I didn’t respond.
‘You little Sikh, you
ma-dar-chod
, you read my journal?’
It was so cold words froze in my mouth. Suddenly I saw the glacier as a huge living organism about to claim me, about to claim us all. This organism paralyzed my thoughts. Father, I cried. Father, I screamed.
‘Hit me,’ I said. ‘Please hit me.’
He put his arm around my shoulder. I felt it barely because of all the layers between us.
‘Hit me.’
‘I have already hit you,’ Chef laughed.
It was a wild laugh. White fumes came out of his mouth. His lips were cracked.
‘Hit me,’ I said.
‘I already hit you. Not enough? It hurts real hard where I hit you. Don’t you know? Don’t you? I hit you with my writing.’
‘I am confused,’ I said.
‘You
read
my notebook because
you
wanted to read it. But I would have given it to you anyways. I, too, wanted you to
read
it.’
‘You are joking, Chef?’
‘Does it hurt?’
‘But, why? Why did you want me to read it?’
‘Because . . .’
Before he could respond I felt my anger rising.
‘Because otherwise men are strangers to one other,’ he said. ‘Even if we carry the same wounds, we remain strangers. We can’t express ourselves properly. Not even our anger. I was able to write certain things down because I was writing them for you. I was angry at you. Angry at myself. Angry at so many people. But.’
‘But, what?’
‘I am no longer. I request only one thing. Please don’t be angry at me. You are not just
one man
. I have always seen you as
two
. You are my beloved, and you are also my witness.’
‘Witness?’
‘Now I can leave.’
‘Where?’
‘When I am gone, you must not mourn me.’
It was then he shared with me the
plan
. Standing by the crevasse he shared the details in strict confidence. I begged him not to carry it out. I am not going to be a party to this, I said. Listen to me, he said. If your father were alive, he would have done exactly what I am going to do. Exact same action. Listen to me, you Sikh. I was your teacher. When a teacher opens his mouth the student listens. When a teacher asks for dakshina the student must provide the fees. Do you know the Mahabharata? he asked. It is very long, I said. What do you mean
long
? You kids don’t read it these days, but let me tell you in the Mahabharata most people believe that the main story is brothers fighting brothers over the kingdom. Nothing can be further from the truth. The real story is that of the black boy. The low-caste boy. The boy was born a talented archer and he approached the Brahmin teacher to advance his skill. The Brahmin used to teach archery to the king’s sons. He said no to the black boy. So, the boy returned to the jungle, he made a clay figure of the Brahmin, and in the presence of the clay figure and a solitary tree the boy taught himself archery, he became more skilled than the king’s sons, as a result they grew jealous and their teacher grew worried, so the Brahmin approached the black boy and demanded his fee. The boy was pleased, the
teacher
had accepted him finally as his student, he was willing to give anything the guru asked for. One is supposed to offer one’s life if the teacher asks for it. The Brahmin did not ask the boy his life, all he wanted was the boy’s right thumb. That very instant the
student
took a sharp knife and cut off his right thumb (which was as black as his face) and offered it to his teacher. He became a cripple, he was never able to practice archery again. Understand? I am not asking you, Kirpal, to offer me your thumb or the fingers of your hand, all I need you to do is this one thing. Be my witness.