My Friend, My Enemy

On this Independence Day…a poem that seeks and an article that compares two cities in our two countries and how they respond to a calamity…more importantly: are we really free?

My Friend, My Enemy

My sky too has a crescent and stars
My leaves too have sprung from similar trees
When I ask you who you are
You look the other way.
You are not born of your own womb
Your lids opened to another world
Forget those eyes you tell me
And find your truth.
One day your truth and mine
Were the same.
Today, for a few acres of your land
You deny me.

Conscience, soul, body, hungers
I satiate with eyes shut
But I feel burdened by history
I am not what you sought
The ballads sung to me sprung
From a different soil
I cross imaginary continents
To become rootless
In unaccounted-for miles
I grab your shadow
A child of the night
You say I let darkness delude me.
You fool only yourself
By shutting morning’s door
In my face.
I peep through the hole in the wall
And quench the thirst of my vision.
Try as you might
Your sunlight
Can never break my prism.

* * *
Are mine bigger than yours?

I hate to say this, but during the week when Karachi’s streets were supposed to be reeling under fear, I was nibbling on tidbits, listening to soft music in a smoke-filled room where the conversation was about Shelley and Frost. I walked barefoot in the corridor examining the paintings. A nude woman, her face invisible, stood out. That bit of her left unpainted was perhaps what was not experienced here: The pain of exposure.

This was Clifton. It was safe. You crossed the line of conscious divisions beyond names like Allahwalla Chowk and life went on. Meat on skewers is not like flesh sticking to the walls of mosques - flesh that you might call your father, brother, husband, lover, friend.

In Karachi I did what many Karachiwallas do: sent text messages asking friends who were cutting cloth for the coffins to “TC” – take care. There was despondency and anger in their voices, and here I was feeling brave hopping into a lone taxi that had crawled along to make my way to Saddar.

From afar, I recollected the Bombay bomb blasts of March 12, 1993. A day after the explosions attendance at the offices was 92 per cent. Huge banners hailed the city’s spirit. “Salaam Bombay”. The Bombayite had risen to the occasion and, as always, was advertising it. I should have felt good about it, but I had found it unsettling. The city had to get off its butt and move. And those moving either had no choice or had the luxury, and applauding it amounted to applauding insensitivity.

But which of the two cities was really more insensitive?

When friends back home said things like, “Oh, but only 16 people died in Karachi, our count was over a thousand”, instead of expressing disgust I began to contemplate. Was this merely a numbers game, the Bombayite’s competitive spirit about any and everything? And what was I supposed to feel about Karachi where I stayed in a hotel, my fortress, which had once been a target? How could I identify with an Us versus Them battle where Them was Us? I could not understand the Shia-Sunni divide at all. How could one Muslim group desecrate a place of worship of another Muslim group?

While the core idea behind the Bombay blasts was to ‘avenge’ the riots, what seemed to concern people more was how much it had cost the Indian exchequer. It is another matter that Chhota Rajan, the henchman of don Dawood Ibrahim, broke away from the D-Company by announcing, “I am a Hindu, a true Indian. I was wrong to associate with him, and I have made it my life’s motto to fight him. I am first and foremost a patriot.” There was a danger of him becoming a hero, when all he was doing was striking a deal.

Bombay, my sheher, my gaaon, my lifeline, that brings tears of love to my eyes, was breaking. The fissures had become visible for the first time after the riots, therefore when the Them behind the blasts was seen to be the ‘outside hand’, most Indian Muslims had heaved sighs of relief. And many Hindus had too, for the antique pieces from Usmanbhai’s shop had to be picked up and the zardozi togs made ready for the next spiffy party. Of course, after the blasts, the socialites had expressed much public remorse and said it would not be right to celebrate in style; the caviar was sacrificed and replaced by ornery canapés. Such was life.

In Karachi, ‘Copper Kettle’ was filled with lunching ladies relishing the honeyed chicken wings, washing it down with falsa juice. No one was saying things like, “Tch, tch, bohat buraa ho rahaa hai…” This was refreshingly devoid of hypocrisy. They went about their daily lives without making a song and dance about it, because their daily lives were very likely a song and dance anyway.

After years of being pulled in different directions, Bombay has adopted a fractured identity as its own. Since iconoclasm is a big burden, the elasticity that was considered positive has now been stretched beyond its limits. It has become so spineless that its in-your-face bluster reveals insecurity.

Karachi, when it shows no visible fear, has a more fatalistic attitude. “Iss shehar ko kissi ki nazar lag gayee!” I heard a biggie say on one the channels. It would be beneath Bombayites to utter such words. They would tell you that people were jealous, they were out to destabilise the economy, and they wanted to taint the fair name of cosmopolitanism. They would say this aloud despite what they whispered in the quiet of their coteries.

Therefore, bouncing back soon after the devastation had little to do with resilience. Bombay had begun to wallow in its new-found status as victim-with-balls. It had been freed of all responsibility. The hangover persists. Today, the Bombayite steps out with a spring in his stride knowing that the life he carries in his fist is more potent when extinguished. From a nameless number he can be assured of a name, two lines about the humble journey he undertook in a crowded bus and an obituary from the organisation he works for, which would never have bothered had he died of natural causes.

The mangled masses of concrete, the skin erased from the face of flesh, these are but objects to be used and abused. No one is complaining. These are shahid-starved societies.

Salaam Bombay or Karachi at times of crises and you pay a backhanded tribute to the pimps who have sold them to you for a premium.