The sun is completely blotted out by a dirty sky.
I shut my eyes as the wind picks up, whipping through the branches with a rising howl as dust sweeps over me, smoothly abrasive. The andhi builds, pushing me back a step, screaming in my ears, bending my outstretched arms as I stand my ground. It flings sand at me, sends leaves hurtling into me, but the tree breaks their force and I feel only brief touches on my skin.
Raindrops begin to shatter on my eyelids, on my ears, my throat, my stomach. The andhi roars now, violent and fully alive, and I keep my eyes closed as I wait for it to subside.
Suddenly something strikes my chest. My eyes snap open and I’m immediately blinded by the dust. I turn around and put my back to the wind, rubbing my fists into my stinging eyes. I fight to keep my balance, gasping, overwhelmed by the storm.
The andhi dies unexpectedly, without much rain.
My eyes are tearing and I open them, blinking to flush the dust out. I have a small cut on my chest, probably from a broken branch of the banyan tree. Around me everything is coated with dust, damp in patches from the spray. The sun is already burning a hole through the rusty clouds.
I’m filthy and it’s begun to get hot again. The wind blowing through the branches of the banyan tree carries the smell of parched land that has waited too long for too small a drink. Rubbing the dirt in the corners of my eyes and fingering the cut on my chest, I go inside to take another shower.
They say the nuclear tests released no radioactivity into the atmosphere. Each a huge gasp, smothered unsatisfied.
8
what lovely weather we’re having (or the importance of air-conditioning)
Your robes are itching and you crook a finger at one of your clerks.
‘Have we considered air-conditioning?’ you ask him.
‘One moment, Milord,’ he says, scurrying off.
He returns in a few minutes, hands you a sheaf of papers, and bows repeatedly. You are about to commence fanning yourself when the title page catches your eye: ‘Air-Conditioning,’ it says. Intrigued, you begin to read and encounter the following:
Anticipating your Lordship’s request, an investigation was conducted into the role air-conditioning may or may not have played in the lives of the various witnesses expected to testify before your Lordship during the course of this trial. Clearly, the importance of air-conditioning to the events which constitute the substance of this case cannot be overestimated.
The pioneer of academic commentary in this field is Professor Julius Superb. Although his ideas received a cool reception when first aired, they are now widely influential and are discussed not only in doctoral dissertations but also in board rooms and living rooms throughout the land. Indeed, Lahore will not soon forget the Superb paper presented at the Provincial Seminar on Social Class in Pakistan.
Professor Superb walked to the auditorium with a determined smile on his face and a growing ink stain on his shirt pocket, the work of the unsheathed fountain pen he had used to add the final touches to his speech. Those of his students who saw him at the time recalled that he seemed distracted. This did not arouse their curiosity, as the professor was known for his absentmindedness.
Reaching the doors of the auditorium, he attempted to hurl them open, failed, and then struggled unsuccessfully until he realized that he was pushing, not pulling. His awesome mind broke the problem into discrete parts, solved each with the inhuman speed and precision of a supercomputer, and he was inside before fifteen seconds had passed.
Professor Superb then waited in the hushed gloom until it was his turn to speak. When the time came, he strode to the front of the auditorium, mounted the stage, cleared his throat, and delivered a few introductory remarks. Finally, he was ready.
‘There are two social classes in Pakistan,’ Professor Superb said to his unsuspecting audience, gripping the podium with both hands as he spoke. ‘The first group, large and sweaty, contains those referred to as the masses. The second group is much smaller, but its members exercise vastly greater control over their immediate environment and are collectively termed the elite. The distinction between members of these two groups is made on the basis of control of an important resource: air-conditioning. You see, the elite have managed to re-create for themselves the living standards of, say, Sweden, without leaving the dusty plains of the subcontinent. They’re a mixed lot – Punjabis and Pathans, Sindhis and Baluchis, smugglers, mullahs, soldiers, industrialists – united by their residence in an artificially cooled world. They wake up in air-conditioned houses, drive air-conditioned cars to air-conditioned offices, grab lunch in air-conditioned restaurants (rights of admission reserved), and at the end of the day go home to their air-conditioned lounges to relax in front of their wide-screen TVs. And if they should think about the rest of the people, the great uncooled, and become uneasy as they lie under their blankets in the middle of the summer, there is always prayer, five times a day, which they hope will gain them admittance to an air-conditioned heaven, or, at the very least, a long, cool drink during a fiery day in hell.’
Smiling, the professor walked out of the hushed auditorium, his footsteps echoing in the silence.
Most of the students present were either asleep or too bored to pay attention. Others had not heard a word, because Professor Superb eschewed the use of a microphone, thinking himself a great orator when in actuality he had a faint and unsteady voice. However, some of those who were awake and listening in the first three rows later said they were transfixed by the speech. Among them was the professor’s former pupil Murad Badshah, who regularly attended the Provincial Seminar Series.
Murad Badshah was never very fond of ACs. He was a man who liked to sweat, and he sweated well and profusely. In his own opinion, he had supremely athletic pores and a finely honed sweat distribution system which sent trickles of coolness wherever they were most needed.
He also enjoyed the natural aroma that clung to him like pollen to an errant bee.
But Murad Badshah was in the rickshaw business, and he had to accommodate passengers whose opinions (at least on this subject) often differed from his. Accordingly, he bathed three times a day in the summer: morning, midday, and evening. He found bathing almost as effective as sweating in its ability to cool his body, and thought of his combined bath-sweat cooling regimen as a way of augmenting rather than diminishing his body’s natural cooling capacity.
ACs, on the other hand, he considered unnatural and dangerous. Your pores will get out of shape if you rely on ACs for your cooling, he would say. It’s fine as long as you stay in your little air-conditioned space, but one day you might need to rely on your body again and your body won’t be there for you. After all, fortunes change, power blackouts happen, compressors die, coolant leaks.
He loved load-shedding for this reason. It amused him to see the rich people on the grounds of their mansions as he drove past their open gates, fanning themselves in the darkness, muttering as they called the power company on their cellular phones. Indeed, nothing made Murad Badshah more happy than the distress of the rich.
Lazy pores, he would say to himself, and laugh joyously. And the rich people would stare at the retreating lights of his rickshaw on their darkened streets and wonder what anyone could possibly be so happy about when it was so damn hot.
Murad Badshah was a firm believer in the need for a large-scale redistribution of wealth. After Professor Superb’s speech, he vowed to break the barriers that separated the cooled from the uncooled, like himself. Indeed, he used this principle to justify his piracy campaign against yellow cabs, since they were not only taking market share from rickshaws but were air-conditioned as well. He was fond of asking his victims, ‘Why should you be cooled?’ A populist, he rebelled against the system of hereditary entitlements responsible for cooling only the laziest minority of Pakistan’s population, and he embraced Darashikoh as a partner when the latter fell from cooling.