This Is What Happened

By this time she was a mother of four but she was not an old woman; she must have been in her early forties. Large and large-hearted, she was the fierce and wise woman who kept the family held together in a tight knot. It was a large family, large in a way that families will never again be. In those days there was no easy plane ticket out of your country; not for education, not for employment, and certainly not for leisure; at least not for this family. So they all stayed together, and lived and died together, and there was nothing strange about their unity.

She was the eldest of four siblings, and these siblings had been orphaned when all of them were children. She had been just nine years old. It had happened so suddenly, so unexpectedly that it could be called brutal for children that young, the youngest being just four. Zakir was a year younger than her, so he must have been eight when their father went to work one day and came back a corpse. A clot of blood had spread through his brain and he was gone, just like that, without warning, without even losing all the blackness of his hair.

Growing up in the care of others, an unspoken love bound them together, a love that is far purer than that which is sought, which is named and used and given for returns. Theirs became a pack of four, two brothers and two sisters, and neither of them would ever turn against either of them, because they had been through what only the most unfortunate had to go through the loss of parents before it even makes full sense.

They lived in a large house and had everything before they lived in a small house and had nothing. At first, there was gold and silver strewn about the house; in clotheslining, in jewelry boxes, in the kitchen; everywhere. The house was a Haveli, a mansion that was opulent not in its elevation but in its spread and all the needless things it contained. Grains were stocked to last for months, even while keeping guests well-fed, guests who would number in the dozens and return sooner than required. After their father died their mother refused to believe it, and soon went into a state of peaceful denial, waiting for her husband to return home from work, in an hour or two, with a complete lack of hysteria, but others said she had become insane and that she could not be trusted with anything important.

In a few months, she died anyway, and it seemed as if that was only natural, since she was dead anyway. But the children were broken once again, and this time the loss was even more profound, the loss of the mother who was their shadow as opposed to the loss of their father who would come back from work and attend to guests.

Zakir was the hope for the rest of the siblings, him being the saner of the two brothers, him being more restrained and hence more dependable. She was aware of this anomaly while they were growing up, that while she was the eldest of the four she was only a girl and hence the heavy thing called responsibility fell more on Zakir than on her, but she refused to give in. She refused to be just a girl and instead became a woman, and she took charge of what was left after the hyenas in the family and neighbourhood sold their house and gave them only promises.

And so she fought, she fought for their dignity and to hold on to whatever little piece of Earth they remained with, and she fought like a man whenever she faced men and soon she became formidable; she was feared and admired by the same people. She made sure that her brothers received an education, she did not let herself become illiterate either. She helped each of her siblings in every single thing they needed help with, and except for open affection, she gave them everything. She managed the expenses, as also the incomes, and made sure nobody spent a penny more than was required. They depended on her, as they used to depend on their mother, and it did not surprise them.

Soon they were all married -- it happens so quickly when it does -- she agreed to marry whoever it was that their elders brought home, and so was the case with the rest of them; they had no say in their individual marriages but the only thing that concerned them was whether or not they could stay close to each other after starting this new life. But that was not to be. Her sister had to move to a village that could be reached by road in four hours, and the younger brother found good employment abroad soon after his marriage. She remained in their small house, the only property they owned after losing it all, and so remained Zakir.

Her husband did not mind moving into her house rather than moving her into his; he did not want to live with his family and did not have enough to find a place for himself, and someone had to take care of this house and she was not sure Zakir could do it alone. So they took care of this house together, she and her husband, with whom she came to bear children soon, along the same time as Zakir became a father to three daughters. Now they became siblings who were also parents, and their worries were new, and it did not scare her as much as it all worried her; to parent little people and raise them in a way that they become worth something.

Zakir had set up a small business, running a garment trade that was risky but made good money in some days, and she had supported him insofar as the money and the logistics were concerned. The only thing she did not provide was the love that is plated on words, on promises and consolations and compliments. He would yearn for all that, she could see, but she had no patience for affection. He would greet her before leaving for his shop every morning, and come to her floor in the house before going to his own every night as he returned home.

And just like that, as life kept going on, with the daughters of the both of them growing older and older and hence becoming more and more of a worry, she heard one of them screaming and she had to abandon the wet clothes she was beating on the stone ground, because Zakir's nine-year-old daughter, the eldest, was screaming and running towards her and shouting something incomprehensible. She had sent this girl to Zakir's shop with a small paper that was scribbled with the kind of meat and vegetables she would need for the dinner, but her niece came back running as if she was chased by a wild dog. Her screaming made the situation sound even worse, so the colour in her face changed to white even before she could guess the nature of the calamity that befell them.

"Baba fell down, baba fell down!" the girl screamed in her face now, and it made her feel better, because within the moment she had come to expect something much worse, and she sighed now and grabbed her niece by the arm and shook her to calm her down and to convey that the girl was blabbering and not making any sense and probably overreacting. But the child refused to budge, and kept screaming that her father had fallen down, but after a pause between her sobbing and shouting, she told the truth: "He collapsed. He is not talking."

In that moment she died and became another person while she was standing blank, gazing with empty eyes at her niece, whatever the hell do you mean to say, she wanted to ask, she felt like striking this girl across the face and yelling at her in that notoriously booming voice of hers: Don't you ever dare to utter such nonsense again, girl; my brother is completely fine. But she could not move her open mouth now, and after a minute or less of frozen feet, she started moving and soon found herself walking in a daze to the shop that Zakir owned and worked at, but there she only found neighbourly faces speaking in pity to her. We sent him to the Princess Ezra Hospital in the autorickshaw of a chap we can trust, with a bunch of men, they said.

What happened, she needed to ask, what did you see, what did he say, who did it, and all such important questions but she had something in her throat now, she could not ask them anything, something pulled at her from the inside and made her questions get all bunched up in a knot within her, and all she could ask was if any of them could stop an autorickshaw for her too. By now four of the girls had gathered around her, two of Zakir's three daughters, and two of her own, and they tried getting into the autorickshaw with her but she managed to yell a refusal at them, warning them to get back home and shut up. This cannot be happening, she kept telling herself in the slow ride to the hospital, even as the driver insisted that he was driving as fast as he could. No, she kept telling herself, this cannot be happening, and throughout the wait in the journey and at the hospital where she was not allowed to see him, she kept repeating it like the meaningless cries of a lunatic.

The night before this day, Zakir had stopped by at her floor in the house when he returned home from his shop. He had called out to her, standing at the door that was kept ajar even at night, but she had not answered. She had decided to pretend that she was asleep, and had gone to bed and pretended to be asleep until she did fall asleep, and this she had done on most nights in the recent weeks that Zakir returned after shutting his shop. When he came to her part of the house in the daytime, she would sit with him and let him talk, and she would talk too, but he would talk more, and she would listen because she knew that he would leave for some work or the other in a while, but after shutting his shop he had nowhere to go except to his wife, whom he did not like, and his children, who he would scold if he found awake so late.

I will wait up for you again, I will sit in wait even if you come at midnight, and I will talk to you and let you tell me for the umpteenth time how you are worried about getting your daughters married and your son literate, I will, Zakir, I promise I will, she kept repeating now, and she kept mumbling this along with her other chant 'This cannot be happening', but nothing changed around her except that more and more people joined in at the hospital, even her daughters and nieces were all there, and yet nobody was allowed to see her brother, until the sun finally set and they said you can see him now, he is dead.

Her eyes were shedding thick tears now, she could not see anything, and what blurred lines and shapes she did see were all shaking violently because she was shaking like that, her whole body moving in convulsions as if being shaken repeatedly by a mechanical and relentless force, and she slipped out of her chair and fell to the floor screaming This did not happen; no, this is not happening; How could it happen this way, how did I let it happen, no, this is not possible, this is not possible, Oh God no, no, this is not possible, and then one of her daughters grabbed her by the arm and shook her and shouted in her face This is what happened, this is what happened Maa you have to learn to live with it.

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