Just then an old woman walked toward the trash heap. By pelting them with clumps of dirt, she chased off the cats that were digging deep into the trash, as well as a dog gnawing on a placenta. She wore nothing other than a loose, tattered sari. (Without a choli.) She climbed the trash heap step by deliberate step. Just as she kicked aside the placenta, a kite swooped down and grabbed it by its end, although, even before the bird managed to regain any altitude, the placenta fell from its grasp. The old woman very gently picked up the coconut because no one else wanted it. She was probably the grandmother of the little girl and the two stark naked boys with her. She was eating the coconut’s flesh so greedily that the little boy took her hand and put it into his mouth. She gave the two boys some of the flesh. The little girl was so young that the old woman first chewed the flesh in her toothless mouth, then pressed her mouth against the girl’s mouth, and then spat the flesh into her mouth. When she had bent over to pick up the coconut from the trash heap, her naked breasts, which looked like withered eggplants roasted over hot coals, quivered like empty intestines. Her breasts looked like mushrooms borne from that very ground. Neither did anyone looking at her breasts, nor the old woman herself, mind her nakedness, but that day I felt completely naked.
The second scene took place in the market just a little ways ahead. In front of the bank, a man was selling fish from a platform raised four feet off the ground. His undershirt had countless holes in it. His undershirt and lungi were covered in fish blood and guts. When his hands got dirty, he wiped them on his lungi so that the old gunk absorbed the new gunk. From time to time, when he splashed water over the fish, a swarm of flies flew up, and only then could you see how small the fish were, and which type. The filthy water and cast-off fish parts flowed down a drain and collected in a canister. When he sold a big fish, he used a cleaver to hack at it, and the blood and guts flowed into this canister. When the canister filled up, he set it to the side and started using another. Standing on their hind legs, cats would dart their mouths forward to catch the discarded meat parts as the refuse slid toward the canister. Those watching were terrified that the cleaver might suddenly clip one of the cat’s heads and then — POP! When a young woman came to buy fish, the fish-seller would make a fist and shout curses longingly at the cats. In one hour, he sold two full canisters for one anna each. A man told me that the poor would cook their rice in it to give it a fishy aroma. Three households shared one canister. Among the poor, only those that were relatively better off could afford this luxury!
The Mughal Dynasty’s Decline (Descending from on High)
Though there was hardly any difference between inside and outside, Basharat called out Maulana’s name from where he stood outside the shack. Only a straw mat, a burlap curtain, and some bamboo slats separated the muck outside from that inside and so provided an imaginary sense of privacy as well as a property line.
This is my grave and that is yours
When no one answered, Basharat clapped in the Hyderabadi style, and then from inside six children came out, one after another, from biggest to smallest, just like a stack of pots. The age difference between them didn’t even seem to be nine months! The eldest boy said, ‘He’s gone to sunset prayer. Please make yourself comfortable.’ Basharat couldn’t see how that was possible. He was standing on wobbly bricks. His mind was about to explode from the stench. If there were a hell on earth,
It was here! It was here! It was here!
On the walk there, he had rehearsed what he was going to say: ‘Maulana, what kind of crap is this?’ He had planned to say ‘Maulana’ in a thoroughly sarcastic and bitter way, the same you use when you are going to launch a horrible insult at someone. But when he saw the shack and the muck, he thought that if this man were taken to jail, it would be for him a life of luxury. All the taunts and insults that Basharat had prepared were focused on his beard and prayer rugs so that if the words didn’t injure him at least they would make him feel ashamed. But all that fell to the wayside. His hands froze. What was the use of cursing him out? His life itself was an insult. When the kids started carrying on around him, Basharat’s thoughts turned to them. He asked them their names. Timur, Babur, Humayun, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, Aurangzeb. My God! In this wretched, wet shack, the entire Mughal dynasty had descended from on high in chronological order!
While the line of Mughal kings had ended, the line of children didn’t. So even the lesser princes were called into service. For instance, one darling boy was named Mirza Koka, Akbar’s foster brother, and whom Akbar had ordered thrown from the castle’s ramparts. (If he had been a real brother, Akbar would have used even worse means to take care of him — that is, he would have sent him on a pilgrimage to Mecca so that robbers could kill him, or he would have blinded him. If he had appealed for mercy, Akbar, out of kingly kindness and brotherly love, would have cut off his head in one stroke, so as to make his situation more bearable.) The little kids and suckling babes who remained inside had names that invoked the majesty of crown and throne, although Basharat couldn’t remember which of them had been killed before climbing onto a throne, and which, after. The truth was that the death of Aurangzeb had spelled the end of the dynasty and the beginning of a period of anarchy. In twelve years, eight kings had come to power in such a way that they hadn’t properly sat down on their throne before they were deposed. Crowns and heads were being tossed in the air like a juggler’s balls. While Aurangzeb had hated music, as soon as his eyes closed for the final time, the claimants to the throne started playing musical chairs. The one little alteration they made was that instead of music, poets would recite passionate encomiums, and whenever they suddenly stopped short, a new prince would spring onto the throne. Nadir Shah was so taken by this Mughal game that he took the peacock throne with him when he went back to Persia. And yet the game continued unabated. Talking about taking the throne with him, I intentionally didn’t use the idiom ‘when there’s no bamboo, no flutes can play’ because kings and royals don’t need bamboo flutes to carry on.
So, about the rest of the descendants of Timur the Great who were still inside the shack: their names too must have been in correct order (or the order of their deposition) because it seemed like Maulana had a very good grasp of history. It seemed as though the pregnancies had overridden family planning in order to satisfy the requirements of Mughal history. Basharat asked, ‘None of you is named Akbar?’ The eldest boy replied, ‘No, that’s the penname of our grandfather.’
He talked to the kids for a while. He asked, ‘How many brothers and sisters do you have?’ One of the boys answered, ‘How many uncles do you have?’ He asked, ‘Are any of you educated?’ The eldest boy raised his hand, ‘Yes, I am.’ Then he learned that this boy, who looked to be thirteen or so, had long ago graduated from a mosque having studied the Baghdadi Primer. Then for three years, he had served as an unpaid intern at a fan factory. Last year, his right thumb had got caught in a machine. It was sliced off. Now he was studying Arabic with a mullah. Humayun, like his namesake, was still living a life of disgrace and wandering. By the time Jahangir was born, pyjamas had been sacrificed to anarchy. However, Shah Jahan’s private parts were covered quite well with the bandages that had been applied to his boils and sores. All that Aurangzeb wore was his father’s fez. Basharat couldn’t see his eyes, and the boy couldn’t see Basharat at all. He was only seven but extremely talkative. He said, ‘In all my life, I’ve never seen such rain!’ His limbs were as thin as matchsticks, but looking at his balloon-like belly, Basharat grew scared that it might explode at any minute. A little while later, the young Noor Jahan came out. Her big, beautiful, intelligent eyes were lined with kohl, and she wore an amulet around her wrist to ward off the evil eye. Her entire face was smeared with dirt, kohl, and snot, except for those parts that had just been cleaned with tears. Basharat patted her on her head. Her light-coloured hair smelled like the harsh smoke of wet wood. A cute, little boy came forward to say that his name was Shah Alam, and then he disappeared. Suddenly he returned to say that he had forgotten: Shah Alam was his big brother’s name. All these Mughal royals were splashing so happily through the muck and mire that it seemed as though their lineage was not that of royalty but of swans.