Diwali in Muzaffarnagar Read online

  In eleventh at S.D., our engineering futures were at stake, and the studies business was heating up day by day. Tuitions were inevitable. Daanish and I went to the same tuition classes. Although he never missed school, his attendance in the tuition classes was erratic. The tuition masters could hardly bother about that. They ran their enterprises in small rooms inside their houses where more than thirty students jostled with each other for seating space; it was better for everyone when someone skipped class.

  No one knew where Daanish went when he skipped tuition. Since the beginning of eleventh, he had a Royal Enfield Bullet with him, on which he sat with a regal posture, never slouching like some of the other kids who owned motorbikes and thought slouching on motorbikes was cool. The Bullet, the only one among students in the whole of Muzaffarnagar, looked like a monster when it stood next to the other bikes outside a tuition master’s house. Sometimes, when Daanish came late to a tuition class, the loud percussive sound from the street would stop the proceedings and everyone, including the tutor, would wait till he entered the tiny classroom.

  When I finally got a scooter in twelfth grade, my friendship with Daanish deepened. Between tuitions, he would ride his bullet next to my Activa, and we would talk about the English Premier League, an interest we shared. It helped that both of us supported Manchester United, and Daanish would often give me updates on the club’s performance in the weekly matches, which I could never watch, owing to the awkwardness I imagined would ensue if I asked my parents for permission. I guess Daanish liked talking to me too, for his attendance in tuitions improved after I got my scooter. That I had topped eleventh might have been a factor as well.

  Daanish wasn’t great at studies, but even he knew that he couldn’t mess up twelfth standard. He asked for my help every now and then – something I was always happy to provide in school or as we stood next to our vehicles between tuitions. For me, the affinity with Daanish was perhaps because he was someone I couldn’t be. There were things he knew and did that I, and other boys like me, who were trained by their families to value studies over everything else, could not. His was a practical awareness and knowledge about the world – something that always caught me off guard, for it made me question why it had been impossible for me to know such things. It was true, for example, that he couldn’t explain the concepts behind the diffraction of light, or why the sky appeared blue, that he didn’t know how a Polaroid lens really worked, but he knew which lanes to take at what time of the day to avoid the sun’s glare. He had a penchant for finding shortcuts, had travelled to Dehradun all alone, had even driven his Bullet to Delhi once. He couldn’t explain the process of refining crude oil, but he knew the mileage of all cars and motorbikes. When he said ten kilometres, it was as if he knew how long ten kilometres really were, as if he grasped every metre of those ten kilometres. He couldn’t explain how internal combustion engines worked, or the exact difference between petrol and diesel engines, or two- and four-stroke engines, but he knew where to find a spark plug in a motorbike, and was the kind of person who could guess what was wrong with a two-wheeler by the roar of its engine.

  I remember how, during the first few months of my Activa’s life, he would accompany me to the Honda service station whenever the vehicle needed servicing, and would give very specific instructions to the mechanics, asking them to check this, check that, replace this, tighten that, et cetera. It was all Chinese to me; yet I liked listening to him talk, since I learnt that there were other kinds of valuable knowledge in the world. We would leave my scooter at the service station on those days, and I would ride pillion on his Bullet to the tuitions.

  One afternoon, while rushing from the physics tuition to the chemistry one, we got into a conversation about how boring inorganic chemistry really was, and how it was highly improbable that any of those producing-metal-from-ore processes would ever help us in real life. Such ‘useless fundae’, as he used to call them, irritated Daanish. The only physics chapter he had liked was electrostatics, which had a section on rubbing material A with material B to create a static charge that could be used to give someone a nice little twitch in class.

  At one point, Daanish asked me: ‘Do you want to bunk today?’

  I looked at him in amusement. ‘I’ve never done it. What will we do?’ I said.

  ‘Something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We can have dosas at Sangam. And some Coca Cola.’

  ‘This is what you do when you don’t come to tuitions?’

  ‘Sometimes. Sometimes I do other things.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like … I just roam around, go for a ride on my bike. Sometimes I go watch a movie at Meenakshi.’

  ‘And what if the teacher calls home and reports our absence?’

  ‘Eh – you think they care? They have never called my house.’

  They never called your house because you are Muslim, I wanted to say, but didn’t. I agreed to bunk the class.

  This brings me to another difference that boys like us became aware of after tenth standard – that of being Hindus and Muslims, and what that entailed.

  Apparently, Muslims in Muzaffarnagar, making up roughly half of the population in the town, did not prefer their children joining a school whose name had the words ‘sanatan dharm’ in it. Sending children to a convent school was okay, for Christianity was a negligible religion in Western U.P. (although the church at Sarwat Gate paid the converts well; we came to know this when our maths teacher in Holy Angels’ changed from Kundan to Christopher), but being in S.D. was less acceptable. This was because S.D. Public School was a Hindu school, and although it seldom exceeded Holy Angels’ in the frequency of its religious messaging, the way it went about things somehow made them more visible. Morning prayers in Holy Angels’ could be in Hindi or English, using hymns and songs that were secular and catholic in turn. Morning prayers in S.D. were almost exclusively in Hindi, despite it being an English-medium school, and were exclusively in praise of Hindu gods. A miniature Jesus hung on a miniature cross in each classroom in Holy Angels’: we never noticed it, either because of its size or because we were too acclimated to the classrooms. The Saraswati sculpture in the assembly hall in S.D. was large and impossible to miss, and, unlike the Jesus, greeted a mass of students, a majority of whom had a picture of the same goddess in their houses as well. In Holy Angels’, the only rule during prayers was to join our hands; some made a fist of one hand and covered it with other, some joined open palms, some interlaced their fingers. In S.D., almost everyone prayed with joined palms. Boys like me and Daanish, Holy Angels’ boys who were a minority in S.D., adjusted to this without ever really being asked to.

  No one talked about these things. We had begun to understand them on our own, and to sense that others understood them too. In my growing-up years at Holy Angels’, where the distinction between Hindu and Muslim was never much of a big deal, I had quite a few Muslim friends, like Daanish Alam, Mohammad Usman, Kashif Bilal, Syed Ali Akbar, Syed Ali Mehdi and Baqar Abbas. Of these, only Daanish and Usman joined S.D. in eleventh standard. The rest moved out of Muzaffarnagar, and not because of academic reasons. Now that I think of it, academic reasons couldn’t have meant much for Muslim students, for none of them was very good at studies. They seemed to have different priorities. Maybe their families had different concerns. Or perhaps my understanding is incorrect.

  But then, this is why I thought the tuition masters would never care to call Daanish’s parents.

  Daanish and I went to Gol Market that day for dosas and Coke at Sangam’s. When the cook was making the dosas on the open-air pan, Daanish stood right next to him and gave him instructions. He seemed to know which ingredients would do what. I was impressed that his worldly knowledge extended to cooking as well.

  The hour or so that we spent at Sangam left me with a strange feeling, and when dusk fell around us, it felt as if it were the first dusk of my life. I was probably looking at the sky at that time of the day after a gap of a
couple of years.

  After this initiation, the frequency of my bunking with Daanish climbed steadily. Sometimes Usman and Ankush would join us if it was physics or maths that we were bunking, for they didn’t share the chemistry tuition with us. Ankush liked to smoke. The bunks would allow him to smoke a cigarette and then kill the stench for the rest of the hour. We were careful: we never bunked any single subject too much in close succession. We wouldn’t even go to restaurants all the time; we could just pass time standing in a little lane, talking about football and cricket, or about the girls we had left behind in Holy Angels’. Sometimes we would see an old classmate going to her tuition, and would give her a knowing nod. The resulting smile on her face would warm our hearts.

  Daanish and I became even better friends because of these bunking sessions. On all weekday evenings, after the tuitions or bunks were over, there would come that point, at Meenakshi Chowk on G.T. Road, when Daanish would turn his Bullet right towards the Muslim area of Khalapaar and I would go straight towards Jat Colony. But this happened only after we had had a lengthy pause on the side of the road and planned the adventures of the next day. Our discussions started eating into the time I was supposed to be saving because of the scooter.

  One fine Sunday morning – all our tuitions were off on Sundays – Daanish turned up at my house unexpectedly. He unlatched the front gate on his own and knocked on the door that opened to the living room. I was sitting there at that time, but it was my mother who opened the door. He politely refused her invitation to come inside and asked for me, mumbling something about an extra class that the chemistry teacher was intent on taking. She then asked him for his name and, hearing it, turned to look at me with an awkward smile. I should confess that I too felt a bit nervous seeing Daanish turn up like that outside my house. But I was always nervous when any of my friends turned up at home, since I felt the need to hide my friendships from my parents. How did he know where I lived? He must have asked Ankush, or someone else, I reasoned.

  Daanish looked well-groomed for that time of the day. I was still in my pyjamas, and the thought that I couldn’t match him in looks no matter how hard I tried crossed my mind. I ushered him outside to talk to him on the street, somehow certain that he would refuse to come inside even if I asked him to. Daanish didn’t seem to care. He was more eager to reveal his plan to me. He commanded me to tell my mother that it was indeed very important to attend the extra class, to get ready in five minutes, and to be out on my scooter as soon as possible.

  ‘But where will we go?’ I asked him.

  ‘We will go to Harmony,’ he said, and added a mischievous smile to that.

  Harmony was a mall on the Delhi–Dehradun highway, located towards Delhi, some eight to ten kilometres away from Muzaffarnagar. It had everything – McDonald’s, Subway, a game parlour called Zone 7, a four-screen multiplex called Cinestar. I had never been there, although I had heard that it was fantastic. Families travelling on the highway preferred to stop there for a break, and I had heard (from Daanish) that there were pretty girls in the restaurants all the time. I had never talked to my parents about going there, for I sensed that it would be prohibited for me. This could be for multiple reasons – the fact that reaching Harmony required crossing Soojdo Choongi, a Muslim-majority village that wasn’t deemed friendly; the fact that it was on a national highway, which meant greater risk for scooterists; the fact that the restaurants there sold chicken items, which was a problem because non-veg was a strict no in my family; and so on.

  ‘Very well then, let’s go,’ I said, the excitement making me whisper. ‘But I don’t have any money in my wallet. And I cannot ask my mother for money right now. It will make her suspicious.’

  ‘Did I say anything about money?’

  So we left my house in five minutes. On the way to Harmony, Daanish’s Enfield and my Activa kept pace with each other. I wasn’t speeding as much as Daanish was going slow. Every now and then I looked at his long hair blowing in the wind. They were the colour of KitKat, I thought. I wished I could keep long hair like him. When I was a child, my father would ask the barber to do a fauji cut on me. As I looked at Daanish’s hair, I wondered if I could let go being a fauji now, now that I was seventeen.

  We parked our vehicles in the maze-like parking lot in the basement of Harmony Mall and went straight to McDonald’s. In the crowd there, one could see women in burqas, sardar men, men with kufi caps on, girls in shorts, women working – a mix that was impossible to find inside any restaurant in Muzaffarnagar. Everyone seemed to have only one concern there – the eating of burgers and fries. Daanish insisted that I eat a chicken burger. I dithered, but then decided to give it a try: I had already broken a few rules that day.

  ‘It’s like paneer, isn’t it?’ Daanish said as I nervously bit into my burger.

  ‘I’m trying not to smell anything,’ I said.

  ‘Chicken has no smell.’

  ‘It does.’

  ‘Don’t you like the taste?’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘Don’t tell your parents.’

  ‘I won’t. By the way, you guys make it in your kitchen, right?’

  ‘Of course. My mother cooks amazing butter chicken.’

  ‘My mother would faint at the very idea,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve always wanted to know,’ Daanish said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Aren’t we killing something when we are eating vegetables?’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘You remember biology? Fruits and vegetables are for plants’ reproduction.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So when you eat a … um … cauliflower … you’re probably eating future cauliflower plants, aren’t you?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘You are eating future life, man. Vegetarians are doing as much killing as non-vegetarians, no?’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘What bullshit? It’s true. I just explained it to you.’

  Our conversation tapered off as there were pretty girls in the restaurant to get distracted with. In my head, I shuffled Daanish’s logic about vegetarian food. Its simple irrefutability made me smile.

  After McDonald’s, we went to Zone 7 and alternated between the video games for hours. Daanish paid for everything. We lost track of time. By the time we exited the mall it was late afternoon. I was sure my parents would be curious, even worried. I grew nervous at the prospect of having to make up multiple excuses.

  ‘Just tell them you went for a movie after the tuition,’ Daanish told me.

  ‘That won’t do,’ I said.

  ‘Why can’t you tell them the truth?’

  ‘Did you tell your parents the truth?’

  ‘I could.’

  On our way back, I wondered what Daanish’s folks were like. I didn’t know what his father did for a living, but I knew that Daanish had an elder brother who had migrated to Dubai after a hotel management course in Delhi. In my eyes, the money for Daanish’s clothes, his Bullet, his hair colour, his deodorant, his cell phone, all came from Dubai, and it sometimes made me jealous that I didn’t have an elder brother like he did. I knew, however, that if I had an elder brother, he would not have been allowed to do a hotel management course after studying science. That would just be inconceivable in my family.

  That evening, my parents were quieter than usual. It was only at dinner that Mummy spoke.

  ‘He went with someone called Daniyal.’

  At first I thought it was okay to let it pass, but then I corrected her. ‘Daanish,’ I said.

  ‘Daanish, Daniyal, same thing.’

  ‘No, it’s two different names,’ I replied.

  Mummy looked at me as if irritated by my insistence that the right name be used. Then she turned towards Papa. ‘Right at the living room door,’ she said, complainingly. ‘Didn’t even knock on the outer gate.’

  ‘Everyone who comes to our house does that,’ I retorted.

  ‘Where were you after the tuition?’ Papa asked me
now.

  ‘We went for a movie.’

  ‘You and Daanish?’

  ‘No, there were others too.’

  ‘Which movie?’

  ‘That … the one about the rings.’

  ‘You’ve never done anything like this before,’ Mummy announced.

  I didn’t respond to that. There were some moments of silence, after which my parents began discussing something else.

  By January, our pre-board exams had already taken place, and school opened only two days in a week. The tuitions were also closed, except for the mock exams held on Saturdays or Sundays, which the tuition masters conducted without charging any fee. On Daanish’s advice, I did not tell my parents that the tuitions were closed and that the fee had been waived. This allowed us to go gallivanting for more than a few hours every day. Moreover, it left me with nine hundred rupees of extra pocket money: it could have been eighteen hundred rupees, but I couldn’t lie completely – I told my parents that the tuition masters had all halved their fees. With the excursions, I sometimes doubted my sincerity in preparing for the competitive exams. It was as if I was realizing that I didn’t really care about being in a big college. The thought hollowed me out, and to dispel it, I convinced myself that the time spent with Daanish was for the good, as being in the house all the time could also have a negative effect on my temperament for studies. I was confident of getting into a decent college for my B.Tech. But it would just be that – a decent college. My parents’ dream of me getting into an IIT was unlikely to be fulfilled. It was rare for a student in Muzaffarnagar to be selected to an IIT. The tuitions were just not good enough, I told myself.