The Wall

THE WALL

I grew up in an area called Kashmere Gate in North Delhi. This “gate” provided passage to King Shah Jahan’s entourage to Kashmir and is one of the four surviving gates to his capital city, Shajahanabad. I live at Parkash Bhavan on Nicholson Road – a connecting road which runs through the heart of North Delhi – my family’s yellowing two-floor ancestral home with two identical balconies and a warehouse below the first floor. Kite-flying was an irreplaceable hobby for every kid who grew up anywhere along the numerous meandering by lanes of Kashmere Gate. It didn’t matter whether one slept on a carry cart or on a bed on the second floor of a large house – acquiring and falling in love with kites was inevitable. I remember how I used to rush home from the bus stop with my heavy school bag which was too big for me. I cautiously made my way through the thronging traffic of dark, skinny rickshaw pullers clad in cheap clothes bought from roadside vendors sitting outside the Red Fort at Chandini Chowk, and large multi-colored trucks with wooden crates containing God knows what, packed in brown jute covers and reeking of stale celery powder and diesel smoke. The only thing I thought about as I avoided bumping into speeding carry carts or reckless rickshaws and breathing in the thick, malodorous smoke from the beedis that hordes of squatting customers of tea shops on either side of the road exhaled, was climbing the huge wall opposite my house and flying the kite I had made my dad fasten with strings to the sharp “manja” in the little “charakri” that my grandfather had bought me from our neighborhood market.

When I was a toddler, I would sit on the crumbling concrete parapet of the second floor balcony every evening under the supervision of my father as he sipped his orange-colored lemon tea with one hand and held on to my waist with his other arm. He would light a cigarette and sing Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the wall” to me, flicking reddish-grey ash to the street. The ash used to look like a dusty, little snow fall on its way to mingle with the dirt at the feet of the wall. The ancient, arched wall made of white and yellowish stones across the little road below my ancestral home began fascinating me. Large, sturdy, and solid, it was but a fence the emperor had built to consolidate his empire. It had provided protection from and acted as a barrier to any hostile activity aimed at the Mughal emperor’s capital, and shelter to hordes of migrating Punjabi families during partition in 1947.

I still remember how tears welled up at the wrinkled corners of my grandfather’s blue eyes the first time I asked him about the wall. I remember how he folded up his Urdu newspaper twice and put it on his table before wiping the tears with the back of his hand, and telling me the story. He told me about the thousand-odd “muhajir” families armed with nothing but old photo albums, tears and the grief of being forcibly cast out of homes where they had grown up playing and wished to die in, arrived on a Sunday morning just before dawn broke out on the horizon. Below the rising sun were cadres of Policemen from their stations in and around Kashmere Gate, marching towards them, with batons in their hands and deep-set, red eyes filled with rage and indecision. They had been sent to “persuade” the families to go somewhere else rather than carving arcs in the wall and live with eight other members of their families in them. Each family lost at least one member to the Police’s persuasion. My grandfather lost his elder brother and uncle.

Hello...

What follows is an article I wrote for college as a "reflective article." Looking forward to receiving your comments. Cheers.

MY REFLECTIONS ON LIFE

"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome." - Isaac Asimov

My final exams began on the 4^th of May, 2008. I knew how important they were, not only because this was my last shot at securing a first division – which I was sure that I deserved – but also at reclaiming what I had lost during my first two years of college being too much in love. Committing yourself to someone for three years and then being spurned by them is not a pleasant feeling to say the least. In such situations, it is not hatred for the one who spurns that enrages, but a realization of the fact that one has utterly emaciated one’s passion, commitment and time by displacing these from one’s obligations and responsibilities. One realizes the futility of love, of human relationships and dangles between misanthropy and self-hatred, promising to avenge the loss of self-dignity and vowing to let nothing stand in one’s way anymore. One lies in bed, wiping off tears of self-pity and shame, awaiting an opportunity – any opportunity – just to not let it slip by.

During my final year exams, my day would begin at four in the morning when I’d start studying with a big cup of tea in one hand and a cigarette in the other – squatting in the balcony and smoking clandestinely just so that I wouldn’t doze off after the four hours of sleep the night before. I would study throughout morning, taking a break at eight with the tea followed by 2 cigarettes at a tea shop at the bus terminal located at a little distance from home. I would skip breakfast, take a bath, pray and get back to my books at around 9:30. In order to avoid being called for lunch – such a waste of 15 minutes as it was – I would go to the metro station at Kashmere Gate at around 10 with my friends and discuss whatever I’d have studied since morning. The ensuing discussions at the station in the scintillating Delhi heat under the mild shade of a banyan tree would last for about two hours or sometimes three after which I’d go back home. My mother would be sound asleep by the time I’d get home; exhausted by the cleaning, dusting, getting my younger brother ready for school, making breakfast, cooking, washing clothes and other chores that she used to throw herself into at around 5 in the morning and continue to perform till a little before midnight. The sight of my bed in my room – cool, calm and cluttered with books used to seem particularly inviting as I’d make my way to the terrace to resist the temptation of a little nap before studying again. I would make myself a cool glass of lemonade, gulp it down quickly and proceed to study on my terrace under the harsh noon-day sun. I could feel beads of sweat trickling down the back of my neck and dropping from my forehead every now and then as I flipped through the pages of the notes that I had religiously made throughout the year. At these moments, I was neither aware of the scorching heat, nor of the fatigue surging through my limbs which was a consequence of the three to four hours of sleep I was getting and the meals I was skipping to avoid wasting time. I would study till midnight before I couldn’t keep my eyes open any more and fall asleep. All I could feel was an uncontrollable eagerness to make up for everything that I had lost and repossessing what was rightfully mine by pushing myself to the edge of sanity and perhaps human endurance. I could feel some kind of indefinable intellectual monstrosity gripping at my insides and devouring everything that I fed it. The monster was in full control and assured me of victory.

I continued feeding my monster for more than a month, feeding it all that I could gather for its insatiable appetite and sacrificing my body and health at its altar – till my exams ended. My mother’s worst fears came true when after a month of recurring fever and mounting weakness – both of which I struggled with while sitting for the eight entrance exams that I gave during that period – I was finally diagnosed with typhoid on the day after I gave my ACJ exam. I was admitted to hospital where I remained for a week. It was during my first night in hospital that I realized the most important thing that I ever will in life. As I lay on the hospital bed at three in the morning, shivering with fever and wishing away the pain from the needle of the glucose drip stuck on a vein on my left hand, I felt an extremely excruciating and piercing pain surge through my heart. Perhaps that’s the closest I could have got to a heart attack without actually getting one. It felt as if the monster was attempting to squeeze out whatever little life that was left in me as a punishment for being sick and not being able to satisfy it anymore. The pain was unbearable to say the least. I couldn’t breathe, let alone try to wake up my dad sleeping on a bed next to mine. My mother wasn’t there to reach out and clasp me to her bosom or to stroke my chest to soothe the pain; the one that I had passionately loved for three years had abandoned me more than a month ago; the nurse supposed to be on duty was probably asleep and my dad was probably sleeping on at least a hundred business problems. I suddenly came to terms with my position. No one was going to come to my rescue. This was my problem, my pain and probably my death. That moment of extreme agony taught me the true meaning of life. I smiled as my whole life passed by in front of my eyes. Nothing mattered – not my family, not my love, not my ambition, not the monster inside me – nothing except the pain. I was willing to let it all go – not because God willed it so, but because I wanted to. I could have stopped making futile attempts at gasping for air and give myself up. It was just me, all the way - I was finally in control. I felt the monster being annihilated as I realized the shallowness of human and social relationships, of education, of politics and literature and science and dreams and entrance exams and bikes and cigarettes and tea and money and sex and ambition. Perhaps it was the medicines being injected into me, or just the fact that my time wasn’t up yet that made the pain get less and less before it finally faded away. I was suddenly thrown off the pedestal of being in control of my life as God intervened and decreed that I live. But all was not lost. Those moments of pain taught me the most important lesson of my life. They made me realize the fact that the one’s life is one’s own and nobody else’s. One lives for oneself and dies for oneself. It is not loneliness or misanthropy or hatred but the true meaning of mortal life. You’re born alone and die alone. Nothing matters in wake of the inevitable journey that death takes you on – it is one that you have to embark on alone. It is the last that you’ll go on, never to return again - sans love, sans religion, sans ambition, sans mercy.

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