Carpet Bombing

When I first heard the word ‘carpet bombing’, I was a kid then, an eighth grader to be precise. I knew carpet, we had one. Mother brought it with her, in dowry, and often looking at it, she used to sigh about her good old days. It used to hang on the wall of our living room, where guests used to come and sit. Whenever I used to see it sun drying and later, dust being beaten out of it, I instantly used to know that a guest visit was imminent. It used to be kept near the sofa where guests used to sit and put their feet on. It caused softness to their feet and conveyed false impression of our well-being, and in a sense, of opulence.

After the guests had left, mother would delicately clean it with her hands, meticulously picking up the food crumbs and then leaving it to dry in the sunlight, the only thing we had in plenty in our home which was otherwise a shanty beyond the living room. And the guests never ventured ahead.

The carpet, therefore, enjoyed an exalted status in our home. It preserved our ancestral prosperity - at least in the eyes of our guests, and hid potholes poverty had made in our lives.

Therefore, this word ‘carpet bombing’ piqued my curiosity. I searched for its meaning in an old, worn out dictionary, which I think belonged to the Jurassic era, when the world was unaware of anything existing by that name. The internet was too wary to enter our neighborhood, whose majority of dwellers knew only to forage during the day and sleep in the night.

‘Carpet bombing’, therefore, loitered in my consciousness only for a few days, and then life ran over it and settled it. Like a roadkill which cakes after repeated running over by vehicles and dries by sunlight and helplessly becomes part of the road and dissolves into the landscape.

The path of my life was paved with many such flattened questions, which in turn burdened and flattened life itself.

***

After the tenth grade, my studies got over. My father was growing old, and so was his capability to feed the family. In my neighborhood, it was the natural course every educational pursuit took. However, it used to start with much hope and sacrifices.

The sight of kids going to school gave every elder a break from their harried lives. It was a much needed make believe system to live through an otherwise unbearable daily life of maddening physical labor and meager income. They would collect all their dreams in the school bags of their children, the bags which they could afford only once in their lives, and whom poverty, with its sharp fangs, used to riddle with holes, through which all their dreams would trickle, slip and eventually transmogrify into their lives, which were lived by their children and then their children, with just as much hope as their children.

Endless lives, so repetitive, so common to all, as if without beginning or end, just like reality, always present and never for a moment going out of focus. Even in their nightly dreams, they dreamt life. Daily life, saturated, heavy, present, widespread, and lived identically by all its inhabitants.

Therefore, escaping life of the neighborhood was not easy. Even their dreams failed to do that.

Then a war happened in our neighboring country.

War was business not only for gods of the earth but also for tiny, faceless earthlings like us. First a country was destroyed and then it was rebuilt. It was the highest profit making business idea of my age. Though, in such an age, economic benefits justified almost anything yet it was an ancient norm to initiate the war in the name of nation, freedom and democracy. Embellishing was such a human trait then.

The war in the neighborhood coincided with the drying up of my country’s economy.

Later I heard that it was not a mere coincidence, it had always happened like that. This ploy made sure that ordinary people, in whose name wars were fought, engaged in wars out of economic reasons. Experience suggested that nationalism, freedom, democracy and demonization of “the other” were necessary but not sufficiently equipped to sustain a long term war. Yet strangely it were economic reasons alone that used to put closure on any war, but not without citing the lofty ideals of human rights and peace. Again, embellishing was very human.

In such a deprived atmosphere, appeared one day a job contractor, looking for young men, for jobs in the war torn nation. He caused an unusual upheaval in the neighborhood. People began to hide their actual ages from one another. However, it was not much of a trouble since many of its dwellers were not even aware of their actual birthdays, forget precise birth dates. But people recollected major events, even minor ones, of their lives by mentioning the movies they saw that time, their release date acted as their timeline, their calendar.

“You remember my marriage?” - Enquired one.

And, if the other found it hard to recollect.

“Sholay was in the theatre” – used to come the cue.

“Yes, yes I remember”, and with this, the recipient of this newly found memory would bring forth even the minor details like –“I danced on that song and I wore the jacket like Jai and had my hair combed like Viru…”, all his descriptions related to the movie, as if the marriage was performed just to celebrate the movie.

In a sense it was, since people used to plan major events of their lives only when some hit movie was playing out in the theatre. May be it brought a sense of time in their otherwise timeless lives, a feeling of change in their otherwise constant daily lives, and a notion of keeping memories in lives that knew only the present. This artifice gave them a means to look beyond their present, which was unending and pervasive, since their woes never saw an ending. Generation after generation the struggle to survive remained as similar as ever, giving them an understanding that time is unchangeable and endless. They could never make out the boundaries of time that separate its three constituents. Therefore, movies at least gave them a vague sense that something happened in life that was different from their usual daily lives and their recollections cheered them.

Therefore, arrival of the job contractor made old movies and songs a pariah. People, mostly middle aged ones, feigned ignorance about them or their release. And if someone accidently hummed them or mentioned about them, then a display of youthful exuberance used to follow, often in the form of affected public brawls or mindless swearing.

People began to appear clean shaven all the time, washing their faces with anything that produced lather, some even with soil. Some dyed their hair with stolen Henna leaves, plucked from the public park. People who were past their prime, somewhere in their middle ages, then were often seen in garishly colorful shirts and trousers.

In their attempt to appear juvenile, they publicly hurled lewd remarks to the passing girls. At other times, these would have been done furtively and nobody would have even noticed. But in those days, that was the whole purpose, and to the delight of every male participant, including the relatives of the aggrieved, the tiff was zealously pursued and masculine energy was overtly displayed. Since more than honor, about which the dwellers had the least idea, livelihood was at stake. A reason purely economic, but never stated. Economics, much like the Baudelaire’s devil, tricked everyone about its non-existence, while running almost every human affair nonetheless.

Soon my neighborhood was gripped with a strange fever with juvenility as its symptom but a profound and mature urge for economic survival as its cause. It even touched the juvenile population. And, therefore it added a previously unknown facet to their juvenility where they acted their age, not under any hormonal or physical changes but more out of economic competition. They looked as absurd as their grown up counterparts.

 Juvenility, thus, lost its natural course everywhere, becoming a simulated exam, which everyone intended to pass without making any mistakes.

But what is there to juvenility without its thoughtlessness and its related mistakes?

***

Affected acts, however big or small, need dissemination. Therefore, in the midst of still economic environment, the only business that flourished was of tea stalls. These small tea shops, usually housed in shanties along the road side, appeared at a feverish pace in my neighborhood, became part of the landscape and in a short time usurped it.

These mainly functioned as a gathering point for people where daily affairs were talked about, blown out of proportion and spread. In such a time where intended acts supposedly needed to reach every corner of the neighborhood, these became indispensable. More than selling tea and low quality moistened snacks, they served to sell news and rumors, mostly rumors. To add more to their usefulness, these tea shops named themselves accordingly – Newspoint Tea Shop, News Center Tea Shop, Newsmakers Tea Stall, NewsWallah etc.

These shops bustled with an odd consortium of people belonging to middle, old and young ages, sitting and chatting together. Some willingly and some unwillingly, dissolved the barriers of time and age that separated them. The middle aged ones, due to their precarious position, used to be the most vocal and giggling, and often took umbrage at the slightest of allusion about their fakeness. They were the ones who came to blows quite easily.

Tea sellers would take much delight in such brawls, often announcing free tea and snacks for the winners of such fisticuffs. Some even started selling the tea in the name of the winner of the day, creating an awareness of brands in the minds of uneducated, naïve dwellers.

Later when these winners turned up at the job contractor’s for interview, they cited the eponymous teas in these tea shops, as a certificate of their strength, exuberance and energy.

This mass show of juvenility did work out for some, but for most it drove them in a state of perpetual juvenility.

I presume similar things happened elsewhere too.

***

I too applied for the job. Not only because I needed it, but also because I was an also ran. Being an also ran was not what I wanted, but it was familiar and safer.

***

It rained for an hour on the night before my interview, but the roof of our house rained for another four hours.

Mother had meticulously ironed my last school uniform for the interview. It had a tie too. I last wore it two years back at a wedding in the neighborhood. It was the only decent dress I had.

Though it rained but mother carefully wrapped the dress in a polythene bag and tucked it under her pillow and slept over it. In the morning she was drenched but she did not allow a drop on my interview dress. Perhaps it was the only thing that remained dry that morning. It made me sad and brought tears to my eyes, which later spilled over my dress, making it wet, and thus, sanctifying it.

***

I reached the job center two hours before the scheduled time. But there were other people, a lot of them, who had been sleeping outside the gate since the night before. My school dress, which had become shorter at my ankles and wrists, as most of my dresses were, became an object of ridicule and amusement.

“Look, he is trying to fake his age by wearing the school dress.” – said some middle aged ones.

“Uncle, the school is that way.” – mocked the youths.

Though it had been only three years, since I dropped out from the school after the tenth grade, I looked much older than my actual age. It was not my emaciated body that betrayed my age but my face, which looked faded, decolorized and worried most of the time. 

I exhibited a flustered smile at these gibes.

Had there been someone else at my place, an exchange of words must have ensued. I shared the neighborhood and its poverty, yet we were not one of them in many ways, we had seen our days of prosperity, and awareness of it filled our behavior with grace and prevented us from any confrontation with them, but not without labeling us, among our neighbors, with a tag of pretentious vanity.

Overcoming the public stare and ridicule, I reached the registration desk. The receptionist was a middle aged man. He was holding a plastic toothpick in his left hand, whose pointed end was occasionally moving between his teeth, and occasionally scratching his back and neck. He had an old newspaper on his desk, from which he never raised his head and eyes. He was a man of few words. He did not bother to look at me when I reached the desk.

He only said – “age?” - In a voice that almost choked with death.

“Twenty-two” – the response came out.

Then the toothpick pointed to his left and moved back and forth. I obliged and joined a sea of people, some young and some middle aged ones, but all of them supposedly under twenty two.

“They are very particular about the age. I have seen people being thrown out for faking their age.” – said a man, who visibly had hair only in his nose. I was standing next to him. To avoid further discussion I feigned indifference and tried to move away from him. He sensed my lack of interest yet he tried to minimize the gap that existed between us.

“I have been coming here almost daily. I know what is happening. They say, there are things one can never hide after an age.” – He added to involve me in the conversation.

By staring long at him and listening to his words, I realized that one thing one can never hide after an age is age. Despite removing all his hairs, his age was peeping from his nose, in the form of whitened hairs, which he often tried to hide while talking, by inserting his fingers and pulling them out. But the more he pulled out or shoved inside, the more it appeared, as if that little nose had housed a whole grapevine of hair inside it. And, the more he looked aged.

The gap that he wished to minimize appeared less of a physical one now. He was only making himself comfortable in an age group to which he never really belonged. May be he was trying to melt away, and be homogenous with the crowd, so that he was not picked up by the prying eyes and thrown away. The idea of an onlooker observing us made me to move away from him.

Then a bell sounded. A round man holding a register appeared. He was wearing a faded cotton vest. Hairs from his armpit were furiously creeping outside, mottled and like bristles. His approach towards me made the other man move behind my back.

“He’s the one.” – I heard him murmuring from behind.

He stood in front of me. His hand moved slightly on the register. The movement parted his arms from his body and revealed his armpit, relaxing the shrub that grew there. It released a long suppressed stench that almost made me unconscious.

“Age?” – He asked gruffly.

“Twenty-two.”

He looked me in my eyes, held it there for a while, and then his probing eyes gradually descended, resting partially at my chest and genital, finally focusing on his register.

“Forty-six” – He shouted.

“What?” – I asked.

He shoved me to his right, the stench that emanated from his armpits, followed me for a while. I stumbled for few steps before gaining my gait. To this day, I am uncertain that what made me stumble that day – his shove or his stench?

Even today, remembering that moment fills me with nausea.

I was then taken to a room, where a man with the doctor’s gear was sitting, reading a cheap, worn out comic, named Doga ko Gado (Bury Doga).

“Number forty-six?”

“Ye….s”

Before I was finished saying ‘yes’, I was put on a weighing machine. He, then, measured my height, heartbeat, blood pressure, noted them down on a piece of paper and handed it back to me. With a movement of his hand, he asked me to go through a door located on his left. He then got busy with his comic, smilingly.

At that door, a smiling man greeted me.

“Congratulations!”

“Ohh! Thanks.”

Without bothering for my reply, he held out his hand towards me. I mistakenly thought it to be a customary handshake and offered my hand in response. He, then, groped for my thumb and pressed them on an ink pad and then on a number of forms which were strewn all over the table. With the continuing motion, he pushed me to the wall and took few of my photographs.

“Deposit the money for your travel and visa.”

The thing about money worried me.

“I don’t have money to pay”

“No problem. Put your thumb here.” – He said pulling out another form.

“I can sign. I know that.”

“We don’t keep pens. You put it here.” He took my thumb and stamped the form.

“Listen, you will not be paid for the first three months. You will be provided food and accommodation though. Your salary will go towards paying for your travel expenses.”

“Now leave. You are done. You be here tomorrow, at 9 in the morning with your clothes and belongings.”

I was led out through the back door.

***

On my way to home, I stopped at the tea shop. Many people, including tea sellers, gathered around me. They asked me about my selection and on hearing that I did, they offered me tea, and gloated that how regularly I had tea at their shops those days. They also made a note of my name and address. And, before I left, they stuffed my pocket with moistened snacks, which I munched all the way to my home.

The news of my selection reached home before me. Mother was at the gate, waiting for me eagerly. I could see her from a distance. On seeing her, my steps gathered pace, as if pulled in by some mysterious force. It had been years since I last saw mother smiling. The smile on her face emanated light and brought brilliance to the faded landscape.

At the doorsteps she hugged me and caressed my forehead. Tears began to well up in her eyes which added luster to her smile-illuminated face. I gently wiped her tears and uttered – “No more.” At which her eyes beamed bearing all the light of the world.

She fought her tears for a second, and then she broke down, eschewing everything that was pent up inside her for years, which daily hardships prevented from coming to the surface, and which added heaviness. The falling tears imparted a feather like lightness. I hugged her, stroked her back gently and led her inside the house.

For dinner, mother cooked my favorite Biryani with only four pieces of chicken, which we could afford at the cost of two days of our daily grocery then. She kept all those chicken pieces in my plate, believing that I would not know it was only four pieces. I too feigned ignorance and ate all of them, with suffering and guilt, every morsel and bite as heavy as the tears I fought back and the smile and happiness I paraded. Mother had seen good days. By eating everything myself, I, at least, affirmed her, the return of those days.

***

The next morning, ordinary daily words gained weight and became unutterable. The tongues refused to carry them outside. And, keeping them inside added heaviness, giving a distinct heaving sound to our breathing. Tears came and kept falling, with a sputtering sound. Among these sounds, I left the home that day, in silence.

On my way to the center, I kept looking back, taking the glimpse of mother, watched her reducing to a dot in space and….. vanishing, always vanishing, something of her always there, every time I looked at her, every time I look at her…..

***

I was assigned the job of a window cleaner at the city’s central hospital. Though the war was half a decade old in the nation yet it had an air of juvenility in this particular town. The natives appeared bruised and upbeat. They believed that this war is their God’s will, and it would redeem their existence as a nation, as someone who refused to budge against an enormous adversary. They said that the world will know of our courage, and lack of diplomacy – many years later I added in my thought.

These were the scant conversations I had with the locals. Since, they were always going somewhere, never resting. Every now and then a caravan, with cattle and belongings, moved somewhere. Everything appeared to be in a state of endless motion. The trees looked scorched and mostly shorn of leaves, as if mourning its immobility in a place where survival was brutally tied down to one’s ability to move.

How far this movement helped in surviving the war is yet to be ascertained, but it certainly gave the natives a feeling that they were doing their part in averting their annihilation. And, they could not have done more than that.

The sad trees, whom their leaves abandoned first and preferred to loiter with the air, were next disowned by the birds. They preferred to nest in deep craters and hollows of the earth. Some of them took shelter in the ruins and rubbles of the buildings. They somehow avoided the intact buildings. The war taught them their fragility, and bestowed an understanding of where their safety laid.

I cleaned windows and its panes during the day. During the work break, I used to roam around the city. The debris of ornate buildings, the entwined rust and enamel glaze of mangled cars, the bullet ridden silvery, mirror-like glass panes of the shopping arcades, the death processions, the scattered limbs, the blood stains on the street. These images chased me life long, competing against each other for their sole persistence in my visual memory. Not only I failed to ascertain the most horrific of them all but I even mistook mundane bruises or shaving cuts for severed limbs or ripped bellies. The war, though visually rich, paradoxically numbed my visual judgment.

It compensated for my visual impairment by honing up my aural abilities.

As evening approached, the siren used to go announcing for the residents to shelter themselves wherever they felt safe. The daily bustle of an ever moving humanity would suddenly come to a stop and an ear-piercing silence filled the city.

Occasional barking of dogs, thunderous sounds of a certain brilliant light flash and the vagrant city winds used to breach its advances. And, sometime human wailings were heard too.

Aided by nightly darkness and the black outs, the silence used to assume a behemoth proportion and nothing posed a formidable challenge to its course, except time.

During such nights everything would slow down. Time used to stretch itself and become heavy. The clock hands moved with reluctance, becoming sluggish by the increased weight of time. I, along with two other fellow workers – Mukhiya and Nonua, often used to wake up in the middle of the night.

“Nonua, are you up?”

“Yes, never slept actually.”

“I, too could not sleep, was just lying down and waiting for one of you to speak something.”

These dialogues more or less we spoke to one another every night. At first we started telling stories to each other.

“When I was in eighth grade, I fell in love…” – said Nonua

“And, one day my friends broke this news in front of the whole class....” – continued Mukhiya lost in his own reveries.

“The girl then mocked me and complained to the teacher, accusing me of misdemeanor…” – I used to add.

We all had similar lives and therefore, similar stories. In each story we found traces of our own stories. And, we used to end up in our own soliloquy.

Isolated islands, floating in the sea of time. It used to make us indifferent to the looming time. But, occasional sounds from the city used to hurl us back into our present, where time would interrogate and mock for our escapades into the past.

To kill time, therefore, never seemed so relevant and pleasurable. We started discussing the direction, source and cause of the sound emanating from the city.

“Dogs howled, I think.”

“No, it is an old woman, whose husband’s dead body is stuck in the road tar.”

“In the road tar?”

“I don’t know how, but the temperature soared to such a level, making tar on the road sticky, and people who were running on them, got trapped and died.

“I have seen a body made up of tar, with its knees and arms submerged in the road.”

“I know what is causing it, I have heard people talking about a fire falling down from the sky. That fire does that.”

“It must be then that old woman. But the howling of dogs must not be ruled out.”

“Look, the woman must be trying to get her husband’s body out of the tar, dogs must have gathered. Then fearing an attack from them, she must have done something to dogs, and in the act both must have howled.”

“Indeed, in a war dogs and humans struggle against each other and howl indistinguishably.”

“What’s that sound?”

“The gun squad shooting their traitors.”

“How?”

“I clean the wall every morning.”

“Ohh!”

“Yesterday, my boss took me there. While he was explaining, a man with his hands tied was brought there. He stood there facing the gun squad.”

“The boss rudely told him to stand a few feet away from the wall, – “The wall will get less dirty now.” – He added with a mocking indifference. Everybody laughed, as if a joke was cracked.”

“He also offered one plastic sheet to the man and made him stand over it, and with the same indifference he pointed at me to take notice.”

“He must be too bothered about the blood being spilled?”

One night, an exploding sound, with a brilliant flash of light, was heard. Its vibration rattled the window panes. Leaving the game in its midst, I rushed towards the window panes. I used to clean them, therefore, there shattering was akin to shattering of my economic existence, and thus my only existence. I counted the number of broken window panes, with every count, I felt a part of my being diminishing. I closed all the windows and held one of them, believing childishly that would somehow prevent them to shake and break. My impatient body shook more.

All of a sudden a series of such sounds mauled my senses. The whole city was submerged in a bright flash. Suddenly the temperature rose, and I fainted.

When I regained consciousness, I found myself half buried under debris, clutching a broken fragment of the window. I was pulled out and taken to the ambulance. While on my way, a journalist asked me (may be to make his news more poignant)

“How do you feel to be carpet bombed?”

“What…carpet bombing?” - A lost question, flattened by life, flattening the life, I thought.

“Yes, carpet bombing”

In response, I could only recite a verse of famous Indian poet Ghalib

“Where the body has burnt, the heart too must have been burned

Scraping the ashes, what do you search for now?”

Many years later, when wars became part of our mythology, I decided to write and publish poetry about how I felt about carpet bombing. I started submitting my work to magazines and journals. At some such time, while I was reading a magazine’s submission guidelines, I came across this:

“We strongly recommend that authors familiarize themselves with recent issues before submitting. Submissions that demonstrate familiarity with the journal tend to receive more attention than those that appear to be part of a carpet-bombing campaign.”

How beautiful it would have been, had poetry been used for carpet bombing?

"Carpet Bombing" was first published on eFiction India.