The two doors leading to the verandah were both shut. Qasim thought, she must be hiding from fear. He went to the door, put his mouth close to a crack in the door and called out, ‘Sharifan … Sharifan … it is me … your father.’ But there was no answer from inside. Qasim pushed the door with both hands. It flew open and he fell flat on his face into the verandah. He gathered his wits and tried to pick him- self up when he felt as though … He let out a terrible shout and sprang to his feet.
Barely a yard away, lay the dead body of a young girl — naked, absolutely naked. Fair complexioned, taut and nubile; the small pert breasts were raised towards the ceiling. Qasim felt shaken to the very core of his being. A scream, one that could rent the skies, emerged deep from within his innards but he had pursed his lips so tightly that it could not escape. His eyes had shut of their own volition. Still, he covered his face with both his hands. A muffled sound emerged from his lips, ‘Sharifan…’ With his eyes still tightly shut, he groped around and picked up some clothes, flung them over Sharifan’s body and left the verandah without stopping to see that the clothes had fallen some distance away from her.
Once outside, he did not see his wife’s dead body. It is entirely possible that he could not see it because his eyes were filled with the sight of Sharifan’s naked dead body. He picked up the axe he used to chop fire-wood and left the house.
Axe in hand he swept through the deserted bazaar like a stream of molten lava. He reached the chowk and came face to face with a Sikh. The Sikh was a tall strapping fellow but Qasim struck him down with such force that he fell like a tree uprooted in a fierce storm.
The blood coursing through Qasim’s veins grew hot and began to splutter as boiling oil does when the smallest drop of water falls on it.
Far away in the distance, across the road, he saw some men. Like an arrow, he made his way towards them. The men saw him and raised cries of ‘Har Har Mahadev!’ Instead of responding with a slogan of his own, he spat out the worse mother-sister oaths he knew and pushed his way into them.
In a matter of minutes, three fresh corpses lay quivering on the road. The others in the group ran away. Qasim kept swirling his axe in the empty air. His eyes were shut. He jostled against one of the dead bodies and fell down. He thought someone had pushed him and began to scream obscenities and shout, ‘Kill them! Kill them!’
But when he felt neither a hand at his throat nor a blow on his body, he opened his eyes and saw — the road was empty except for the three dead bodies and him.
For a minute he felt disappointed, for perhaps he wanted to die. But, all of a sudden, the image of Sharifan — naked Sharifan — appeared before his eyes and turned his whole being into a pile of burning gun- powder. He got to his feet, picked up the axe and once again began to sweep through the street like a stream of molten lava.
He crossed several bazaars but they were all deserted. He entered an alley but it had only Muslim houses. Thwarted, he turned the stream of his lava in another direction. He reached a bazaar. Raising his axe high in the air, he began to twirl it ferociously and spew the most god-awful mother-sister profanities that he could think of.
Suddenly, he made the painful discovery that all this while he had been uttering only mother-sister curses. Now he began to scream daughter-related obscenities and in one single breath spat out all the daughter curses he knew. Still he felt no better. Irritable and dissatisfied, he walked towards a house whose doorway had something written over it in Hindi.
The door was locked from inside. Like a madman, Qasim began to strike it with his axe. In a matter of minutes, the door broke into pieces. Qasim entered the house. It was a small house.
Qasim forced the choicest profanities from his parched throat and shouted, ‘Come out! Come out!’
The door to the verandah directly in front of him creaked. Qasim kept forcing a stream of obscenities from his parched throat till, finally, the door opened and a girl appeared.
Qasim clenched his teeth then thundered, ‘Who are you?’
The girl ran her tongue over dry lips and answered, ‘A Hindu.’
Qasim stood ramrod erect. He looked at the girl with fire-shot eyes. She was barely fourteen or fifteen years old. He dropped the axe from his hand. Like a falcon he pounced upon the girl and shoved her into the verandah. And, then, began to tear her clothes with both his hands like a man possessed. Scraps and shreds of fabric began to fly in all directions as though someone was carding cotton. Qasim remained busy taking his vengeance for about half an hour. The girl offered no resistance because she had become unconscious as soon as she had fallen on the floor.
When Qasim opened his eyes he found he had both his hands wrapped tightly around the girl’s throat. With a jerk, he removed them and jumped to his feet. Drenched in sweat, he looked once in her direction so that he could fully satisfy himself.
Barely a yard away, lay the dead body of a young girl — naked, absolutely naked. Fair complexioned, taut and nubile; the small pert breasts were raised towards the ceiling. Qasim’s eyes shut tightly of their own volition. He covered his face with both his hands. The hot sweat that drenched his body turned into a sheet of ice and the lava coursing through his veins hardened into a rock.
In a little while a man entered the house, brandishing a sword. He saw a man with eyes tightly shut trying to throw a blanket with trembling hands over something lying on the floor. He thundered, ‘Who are you?’
Qasim was startled. His eyes flew open. Yet he couldn’t see a thing.
The man with the sword shouted, ‘Qasim!’
Once again, Qasim got startled. He tried to peer at the man standing not far away but he couldn’t recognize him because his eyes refused to see anything.
Nervously, the man asked, ‘What are you doing here?’
With quivering hands, Qasim pointed at the blanket lying on the floor and in a hollow voice uttered only one word, ‘Sharifan…’
The man stepped forward urgently and pushed the blanket aside. The first sight of the naked corpse made him tremble; abruptly he shut his eyes tightly. The sword fell from his hand. With his hand over his eyes, he left the house on wobbly legs, muttering ‘Bimla … Bimla …’
NAKED VOICES
Bholu and Gama were brothers. Both were extremely hard working. Bholu was an itinerant tinsmith. Every morning he would set out on his rounds with his little torch perched atop his head. He would roam the streets and alleys of the city calling out to people to get their dishes and utensils tin-coated. Every evening when he returned he would invariably have three or four rupees tucked into the fold of his tehmad.
Gama was a hawker. He too roamed the streets all day long with his basket on top of his head. He too earned three or four rupees every day, but he had the bad habit of drinking. Every evening after buying his evening meal he had to buy a quart of country liquor. The liquor would go straight to his head. Everyone knew he lived to drink.
Bholu tried his best to make Gama, who was two years older, see sense: drinking is not a good habit; you are a married man; why do you waste money; your wife will live a far better life if you save the money you throw on drink every day; do you like to see her go around half- naked dressed in those rags; and so on and so forth. Bholu’s words would go into Gama’s one ear and come out of the other. Till, finally, Bholu admitted defeat and stopped saying anything on the subject.
Both were refugees. They had found a large building with many servant quarters. Like many other squatters, they had staked their claim to a quarter on the second floor. This was home for them.
Winter passed easily enough but when summer came, life became difficult for poor Gama. Bholu would spread a cot on the roof and sleep comfortably enough but what was poor Gama to do? He had a wife and upstairs there was no provision for any sort of curtain. Gama was not alone in this; all the married men who lived in these quarters faced the same dilemma.