The caretaker had been following me as I studied each of these masterpieces, but I hadn’t noticed him. As he saw me laughing at a sketch of a mullah absentmindedly stroking his penis while he gazed longingly at the forbidden apple on the celestial tree, he addressed me in Punjabi.
‘Like them?’
‘They’re brilliant. Do you know the artist?’
‘I am the artist. Don’t you recognize me?’
He took off his stupid beret and dark glasses. Even then I had some difficulty, since he was bald as a turnip. Then I realized.
‘Plato? Can it be?’
‘So now you don’t recognize me.’
We embraced each other. My failure to recognize him was an even bigger shock than his actual presence. It worried me. The only explanation was that I had not looked too closely at the caretaker unlocking the gallery and later it was the paintings that had demanded all my attention. I apologized profusely but he was triumphant.
‘How long have you been in Britain, Plato?’
‘I came some years after you, but I had to find work and so I had no time to look for you or Zahid Mian or anyone else.’
‘Zahid was here?’
‘Yes, and the Butterfly, but not for long. He’s a heart surgeon in Satan’s city now. Washington, DS, District of Satan.’
I managed a weak smile, wondering, as usual, how Jindié’s heart had survived the marriage. Plato had returned with unwelcome memories.
‘This is amazing work, Plato. In Lahore you never spoke about painting. A leap from mathematics.’
‘You really like it?’
‘I do.’
‘Then I’ll paint more. I had decided that if you thought it wasn’t worthwhile I would stop.’
‘I’m not an art critic’
‘If it was one of those I wanted, I would never have pushed them to invite you. You understand. By the way. That woman from the magazine wants me to paint her.’
It wasn’t ‘by the way’. Something was up and it was Plato. He smiled at me.’
‘Now you understand the etchings.’
‘Partition?’
‘What else?’
‘The pain expressed is universal. War. Famine.’
‘Partitions. Always partitions. Whenever they divide, we suffer. Have you time? Should we find a teahouse?’
‘Yes, but not here. Let’s go to Drummond Street.’
I inspected his bald head and told him that would have been a better disguise than the beret, but irritatingly, now that we were in a public space, he insisted we only speak English. His aversion to mixing languages was as strong as ever, and he reacted angrily when I pointed out that every language was a mixture. Had he counted the number of Sanskrit words in Punjabi, or Persian and Arabic derivatives in Urdu or Arabic in Spanish? He brushed Urdu aside with a rude gesture.
‘What else do you expect from a courtier’s language?’
‘Ghalib, Iqbal and Faiz… all courtiers?’
‘Iqbal and Faiz were born in Sialkot. They should have written in Punjabi.’
‘But Plato, Faiz explained why he didn’t write in Punjabi. Baba Bulleh Shah had said all there was to say in Punjabi. There could be no other.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Plato. ‘He could have equally said that Ghalib and Mir had said everything in Urdu.’
‘But they hadn’t, don’t you see? Faiz used the model, refined it with political imagery. Politics as love. Love as politics.’
‘Please speak in English.’
‘Can’t discuss our poets in English, Plato.’
‘Then save talk till later.’
He had shrunk a little and walked with a slight stoop. And there was something else. Perhaps it was because I was so much older now that I noticed, but Plato appeared lost in a way he had never done in Lahore. Would he have prompted Hamlet’s ghost at the RSC? Since I was going to review his work, I needed to know why and how he had become a painter. That was the surprise. Mathematician, literary critic, cycling acrobat, conversationalist, bon vivant and now a painter and a very unusual one, too. But he had to tell the story in Punjabi, and so had to wait till we reached Punjabi space in Drummond Street.
I said in English, ‘Is there anything you want to do here that for some reason you haven’t yet done?’
‘Yes. I want to see Cambridge and the mathematics section of their library. So I can see a world that offered me attention, but that I rejected. No hurry, understand? When you have a free day, take me there.’
By the time we reached the Indus café in Drummond Street it was almost time for lunch. I asked for a corner table in the recess near the back, close to the ‘family tables’ where women were accommodated and where we wouldn’t be disturbed, and ordered kebabs and tikkas and the haleem for which the place was famous. It was cheap food infinitely superior to the trendy Indo-Pak eateries that catered to indigenous tastes and would do anything for a Michelin star.
It was here that Plato reverted to Punjabi and described his life since he had left Lahore, two years or so after me.
‘We were lucky in those days. We didn’t need visas. I borrowed money and left. Why? Because things were changing. Life at our table died soon after you left. They were planning to demolish Babuji’s cafe and Respected’s fruit juice parlour and replace them with something modern and ugly. The college centenary was approaching, and they thought they should tart up. They put on too much lipstick and face powder, like the girls in the Diamond Market. Also I was no longer happy with just teaching rich kids. The quality of my pupils was not improving. If anything, the opposite. I don’t know. Many reasons. I got fed up. Some of our friends were cuddling up to the military dictator, just like all the newspapers. I was disgusted. I reminded myself that, after all, this wasn’t my country. Lahore wasn’t my town. I was a refugee from another Punjab. The only friend I had left from those days was Younis the sub-postmaster. Remember? Of course you do. You had your own relationship with him. But he lived in Peshawar and loved the place. He was married. Children. Very different from me. I left.
‘When I arrived in London I had the name of one contact, a cousin of Younis who was married to a Mirpuri girl, and worked on a building site carrying bricks for the bricklayers all day long. He lived in Ealing, in a house filled with others like him. He greeted me warmly but said I would have to find a night job, so I could sleep in his bed during the day. Later I could find a room. I got a job within a week, working as a waiter in an all-night place where trucks stopped regularly for petrol and I made tea or coffee. I lived on baked beans and white bread every day and for many months. The body suffered. Not interesting.
‘Then Fate dealt me a slightly better hand. A cousin of the petrol pump’s owner fell ill. He had a franchise selling newspapers outside a tube station in North London. They asked me whether I would work there till he recovered. So I became a newsagent. It was better work, even though I had to start at five in the morning and finish at six-thirty in the evening. Morning papers till last editions of the evening papers for final rush hour. I now had a room of my own in a boarding house near Kilburn High Road. I earned enough to eat two meals a day and go to the cinema. Also, I must be honest, to strip joints, which were very expensive for me, but I had to make those visits, otherwise I’d have gone mad. Ten shillings entry it was, but I needed the images to comfort my seekh kebab at home. I was paid ten pounds a week, which was a lot in the early Sixties in London. One pound on strip shows twice a week, but still I saved three pounds each week.