The File of Life

‘Husband?’ she echoed their question and added, ‘What is that?’ The men glared back. It made them uneasy. Such impropriety reduced the dignity of the Tehsil office.

She didn’t care. They didn’t yield and continued to stare. After a pause, she announced, loud and clear, ‘I have no husband.’

People walking past stopped and turned to have a good view of her: a woman with no husband, and a child!

The public set the tone for the officer’s interrogation: ‘Then how the child?’ Unabashed, she replied boldly, ‘The same way as all children.’ She did not mumble or mince her words.

‘Tell us the man’s name,’ The officer dipped the pen in ink. Blue drops oozed out. Drops, that would inscribe a name.

Whose name? She pondered. One she did not wish to remember, one she had tried hard to forget and had almost forgotten, a name that had become synonymous with pain. As the pain faded, the name too had grown hazy. They wanted that name to be joined with the name of the child, to extend it, to complete it. Suggesting that his name would be considered incomplete if they didn’t, he would be a child with half a name, known to have half a parent.

‘There is no name,’ she said quietly.

‘There has to be one,’ the officer insisted.

She knew only too well that a child is born of man and woman. She also knew that the man could choose to disappear. Never be there for a child. Abrogate. And they wanted such a man’s name to be part of the child.

‘Try and remember a name out of the many names.’ He suppressed his snigger. She turned away. Passers-by began to prompt, ‘Just say it and be done with the formality…’

Soon it was afternoon.

‘It’s for the register,’ the officer explained, ‘if the column is left empty, it may be taken as my carelessness.’

The carelessness of the man versus the carelessness of the record keeper? Is an empty column too much for them? She had borne the emptiness all along and now the proof would be on paper. She did not speak.

‘Call him anything, no one checks,’ the junior clerk added.

‘We need a name to fill this up,’ the officer explained again, ‘Any name, anyone, anything. No one will know, it’s just a name.’

‘Then put yours down,’ she said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You need to fill in a name – who will know it’s yours,’ she riposted.

They were quiet now. The officer faltered.

‘Or please write NA, non-applicable. Let the child be known as the son of a mother.’

The officer looked around. People had understood. The woman was stubborn and he was helpless. He split her name into two in the register so both the columns, were filled. In the certificate, the space was left vacant as the woman desired.

With a sigh, the clerk gave her the paper. She was relieved. Four years after Anmol was born, she had proof of his birth. He could now go to school. The file of his life had opened.

The headmaster of the school had been a teacher of Mathematics. He was uneasy with empty spaces. Numbers went from one to nine and then a zero appeared. It added value or remained notional, but it did not denote emptiness. He turned to the woman and said, ‘There is a mistake, a serious one. Please have it corrected.’

‘Who will correct it?’ she asked.

‘The registrar,’ he explained.

‘He cannot,’ she answered, ‘for the fault is that of another man.’

He took a while to understand. The school did not deal with men who disappeared. It dealt with children who appeared in the classroom. It introduced them to the world of paper as an abstraction of life. A name, a symbol, a digit, an alphabet for everything.

She waited. And looked at the wall behind his chair, where songs and slogans were painted. He realised that she could read the messages that invited all children to attend school. There was no scope for further conversation. Let the class deal with the situation. He signed on the file.

Anmol entered the school, eyes glistening with tears and a lollipop in hand. He recognised many children from the school. At times, he’d played with them by the pond. He smiled. But they grew stiff at the sight of him.

‘Look teacher, look who has come!’ they chanted.

The weary teacher lifted her head from the register and asked him to sit with the children who sat apart from the rest of the class on a faded jute mattress. But they also refused to share their rug with him. He moved further into a corner, where no one could see him and crossed his legs on the floor.

He did not like it. But he did not tell his mother, she was so happy to see him go to school. He sat in the corner for days. The teacher said many things which he could not understand. She called out to the other children by name. But he was never asked to answer a question. Nor was he asked if he was following her. He was not sure if she could see him in the dark and dusty corner where he sat.

One summer day he felt thirsty and went up to the water pitcher. He lifted the cover noiselessly, and the room broke into screams. He turned. Desperate hands gestured to him to stop. He could not understand. The teacher looked helpless.

The children ran about, shrieking wildly, ‘The water’s gone bad.’

He stepped back.

‘Tell your mother to give the school a new pitcher,’ the teacher said.

‘Why me?’ he asked.

‘Because you touched the pitcher,’ roared the children, ‘you spoiled it!’

‘I did not know,’ he stammered. But now he knew. He was to sit away from the rest, all by himself. He was not to drink the water. He had no place in their midst. So, he decided to go home. And not come back.

His mother disagreed. She stood on the road and shouted at the teacher, ‘You teach my child or I’ll report you…’

‘It’s not me, it’s the children,’ the teacher mumbled, ‘I can’t help it. They bring the village with them.’

‘Isn’t the school meant to open their world?’ questioned the mother.

‘But it is in the village. On village land. The children come from there and go back there. They carry their homes in their heads. I’m from the city,’ she said and hurried off.

The mother did not withdraw the child. ‘They may not like us, but they cannot throw us out,’ she told her son, who dreaded the consequences of such determination. His mother had a straight hard face and at times he did not like it.

But then … she went to the potter and brought home a small clay jar and gave it a coating of raw rice paste. Soaking her fingers in turmeric, she dotted the jar with a hundred little suns. In the light of the day, they swam like tadpoles in the white of the pond. Anmol loved it. The water from the jar was sweet and cool.

Then she placed straw in a jute sack and flattened it. With a cobbler’s needle she stitched the two sides of the sack together and made it into a thick mat. Anmol watched her nimble fingers sew colourful patches on the mat. ‘It looks like a carpet,’ he said.

‘And you know that carpets can fly?’ He nodded. He had heard such stories.

She tore off the shimmering border of a saree and sewed patches from it on to the mat.

‘The carpet is real…’, she went on, making a border with strips of tinsel, ‘and its secrets lie in the stitches. Those who do not care to fly can’t see it. But it whispers to those who dream of distant lands and takes them there…’

Suddenly, the rivers and hills, sheep and horses with beards, wizards with elephant tusks, all came riding on white clouds in the blue sky. The clouds that he and his mother would see from a high peak. They carried the magical people. He would meet them some day.

‘There it is, for all to envy,’ she said, spreading the finished mat, ‘Let them keep their rug and water. You carry yours!’

The next day he set out for school armed with the mat under his armpit and the clay jar in hand. Overhead were white clouds with whimsical shapes. They cheered him up and stayed with him till the door of the class. As he peeped in, the magical world vanished. He did not wish to let it go. So he spread the mat by the door and sat down. No one looked at him, but he had got used to being the unnoticed one. The sun touched the mat and its beams danced on the tinsel. All eyes from the classroom turned towards him. They saw the boy seated in the majestic splendour of silver light and were filled with awe. Momentarily. They saw that he was content to be by himself with his beautiful mat and jar. They felt defeated and cheated. Some feigned indifference. Others admired his possessions from a distance. Some tried to touch the glitzy patches.

One child asked, ‘Can I touch your jar?’

‘If you let me touch yours,’ he said.

There was a pause. Anticipation. And then hesitation and withdrawal. One boy, however, would not take no for an answer. He wanted the jar and insisted upon it.

Anmol said, ‘How can you take my jar when you call me untouchable?’

‘I take what I want, and I can take it, but you can’t,’ the boy replied.

‘No … o…’ Anmol protected the jar with his hands.

‘No?’ Another boy came forward. He was good at playing the game in which the player who plucks the hanky from a circle first is the winner. He grabbed the jar and others cheered him on. A baffled Anmol ran after him. The boy passed it to another boy and he to the next all of them giggling. Anmol ran after them mumbling, ‘my jar, my jar…’

‘Your jar, is it?’ the first boy said. ‘Then here, take it,’ and he tossed the jar onto a rock. It splintered and the water ran out. Anmol rolled up his mat and hit the boy. ‘Teacher, look, he is hitting me!’ the boy cried out.

The teacher had just opened her lunch box. She came out and saw all the children looking at Anmol. She immediately slapped him. His cheeks burnt and he wept as he yelled, ‘You touched me … you did…’

The teacher picked up a stick and ran towards him. He too ran. Faster than her. Faster than he ever had. He ran out of the school gate into the meadows where the grass grew and the goats grazed. He did not look back to see if they were following.

They chased him to the gate, but no further. He kept on running. He paused. The mat he was carrying was heavy. He could run faster without it. But if he left it in the grass, someone might take it, someone who did not know its secret. A kite might snatch it and a dream would flutter in its beak. He ran faster than the birds, happy to run. He did not want to stop. He did not want to go back and face the pieces of the jar. He would drift away like a cloud. In the smoke. With his mat.

Smoke billowed from the engine of a train, all set for its journey. He climbed into a crowded compartment. The train would take him away to a distant place, to a faraway land.

Nobody asked him to sit. Nobody shifted to make space for him. He wanted to hide and looked under the berths, but boxes and trunks were crammed there. The people shooed him away with their gestures and talked amongst themselves. They suspected he was a thief. Many felt the police should put such children in jail. He had seen policemen in his neighbourhood and was scared.

Tucking the mat in his shirt, he dived out through the open window and climbed on to the roof. This was closer to the clouds and he felt more at ease. He could spread his mat and sit there. To one side was the bridge that led to the village. The train began to sway from side to side. Smoke filled the air and covered the sky, the station and the bridge. Through the smoke he saw a figure in blue. The outline became clearer and he saw that it was his mother. Through the whistle of the train and the hoot of the engine, he could hear her voice: ‘Get off the train you fool – no more school for you.’

He hastened to climb down, even as the train began to move. His feet felt the tremor and he tried to balance. A porter standing on the steps of the train, took him in his arms and placed him on the platform. He stood there and waved with both hands at the passing train and the passengers who had yelled at him.

His mother came, platform ticket in hand, pressing twenty rupees into the palm of the potter saying, ‘brother.’

‘How did you guess where I was?’ he asked.

‘Where else would you go, when it’s your own village that bites.’

‘Let us both go away,’ he pleaded.

‘We will,’ she assured him, ‘When we can pay for our tickets.’

His mother did not make him a new jar. School was over. The headmaster was relieved. The class had resolved the issue as he had hoped. He appreciated the attitude of the teacher for allowing the will of the class to prevail.

The mother was thankful that the child was safe. Anmol was happy to be away from a hostile classroom. He played with the tiny animals made of dough while his mother rolled out chapattis.

‘So what if you don’t go to school, you are still my son,’ she said. He nodded happily. Sometimes not so happily. While scrubbing the floor, she added, ‘So what if you will not be a big man who wears a tie and boots, you are still my son.’ He felt uncomfortable but nodded, nevertheless. When combing his hair, she said, ‘So what if you won’t be in an office with a table and chair, you are still my son.’ He was not sure whether that was a good thing or not, but he nodded. Watering the plants, she said, ‘So what if you never get to eat a plateful of rice with spiced curry, curd, and sweets, you are still my son.’

That’s when the nodding stopped. He wanted to taste the nice food he had heard about, but never seen. Maybe it meant not being her son. Maybe if he wasn’t her son, he would still be in school.

He ran out and wandered through the fields and meadows. The children who went to school, raised their voices so he could hear them say their tables aloud, but he did not pay heed to them. He looked up at the tall dense trees. Tiny patches of light streamed in through the foliage, reminding him of his mat. The river flowed, dressed in a silver sheen, sparkling like tinsel. He sat on a rock, looking at the clouds, that were turning grey, and he wondered where his airy friends went when it rained. He did not have the chance to find out, because before the monsoon began, he was in school again. A different school.

It was outside the village, attached to an orphanage but permitted some day students. His mother’s distant cousin worked there as a chowkidar and had requested the Director to let his nephew sit in the class.

The school gave him a cotton uniform and free lunch. Anmol was delighted. He realised that school was about learning new things. No one teased him. The children of the orphanage had no past to talk about, they did not ask him questions. Silence dominated the dining room. Anmol barely noticed it. He concentrated on the food.

At times, when the school ran out of staff, his mother would step in to help with the sweeping and cleaning. On those days, his classmates treated him as someone special. They looked at his mother as if she was a fairy. She was beyond their experience. Some of them would try to touch her finger or arm. She would straighten their hair and wipe their noses and send them back to class. They glowed with happiness as if blessed by a sacred sage. The other grownups in the school were probably also parents. But his presence in their midst made them see her as a mother.

After school, he walked back with her and as she chattered about the birds and the trees as he repeated his lessons to himself. If there were mulberries and jamuns lying about, he would collect them. And then he felt like a young child again – it was a strange feeling, as if he was replaying a memory.

When the time came for the Board examinations, the school advised him to appear as an independent candidate and helped him do so. The results came out in the newspaper. He saw his roll number in the list and knew that he had passed. He had known he would; he had studied hard and written the papers with confidence. His mother was proud, the mother of a son who had cleared the high school exams. She bought him a new shirt and a pair of shoes. His aunts came dressed in shiny clothes and brought sweets for him. He would be the first one from the family to go to college.

Anmol had never seen such a celebration in his house … with laughter, and sherbet and sweets and aunts in glitter. He thought of the tinsel mat. The mat that had come alive.

The certificate and mark sheet were to come by post. They waited for days. But it did not arrive. The postman came and went. He shook his head each time he saw them. It was he who advised the mother to check with the head office. He gave her the address in Kanpur. Catching the morning train, she reached the office. It was important for her, because in her heart she had begun to doubt the result. Maybe Anmol had made a mistake. Maybe he had said it to please her. She wanted to know the truth. Not to contest his version. Only to let the quietness between them absorb the altered reality.

The officer’s table was high, and his round flabby face was barely visible. The attendant brought in a file of crumpled papers. The officer turned a page and his fingers tapped on the table. ‘Madam,’ he said in a hushed voice, ‘there is a problem here…’

She grew nervous. ‘Does he have to reappear or…?’

‘What for?’ His thick lips slanted sideways, ‘He has a good percentage … a bit on the lower side, but a first division all right.’

Her confidence restored in the son, she spoke firmly, ‘He wants to go to college. Please give us the certificate right away.’

‘I would happily do so, but his papers are incomplete,’ his chin bent forward as if scrutinising the file further, ‘there is no mention of the father’s name.’

Ah the father! He surfaced each time the file was opened. A nameless man who continued to demand to live on paper and in files!

‘I understand that it is not necessary.’ She did not want to say more.

‘Please madam, try to remember the name. Think of the boy.’ She was quiet. The officer’s fingers grew anxious. ‘Has the boy seen him?’

‘No.’

‘Has the man seen the boy?’

‘No.’

‘Does he know there is a boy?’

‘What does it matter?’

‘Did you tell the man that there is a boy? Give him a chance to…?’

‘No. He did not want that chance.’

‘But the boy, how will he answer?’

‘Answer whom?’

‘The people’

‘They know.’

For the first time, he looked away from the file and said to the clerk, ‘Make a note of this.’

The clerk did so, solemnly. Paper. More paper. To fill up the emptiness of a column, to list the clues.

‘What does the boy say?’ the officer asked. ‘After all, his future is at stake.’

‘He has done well for himself.’

‘You are not understanding the complications. Let me talk to the boy.’ With these words, the officer closed the file and disappeared into the next room.

She turned to the clerk. He was more straightforward and offered to have the certificate prepared for a thousand rupees. She bargained for five hundred. That is all she had with her. He relented. She walked to the station and travelled ticketless from the city to the village.

A week later, she set out again with Anmol. The lanky lad, neatly dressed, was flushed with excitement at his first train journey. The office, in contrast, was cramped and sultry. The clerk, nevertheless, smiled at them. And the mother felt reassured.

The round flabby face of the officer looked at Anmol and called him aside. After chatting for a while, he whispered the question, ‘Do you know this woman?’

Anmol did not quite understand the question. He glanced at his mother and said, ‘Yes, I do.’

‘Who is she?’

‘My mother of course,’ he answered, without blinking an eyelid.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ The absurdity of the questions irritated Anmol. He looked at his mother again. She averted her eyes.

‘Does she treat you well?’ Anmol was confused. He turned to his mother for support. She lowered her eyes. ‘I didn’t get the question,’ he said to the officer. ‘Does she wish you well?’ the officer clarified.

‘She has made me. Whatever I am is because of her.’

‘But does she desire your happiness?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because your papers do not have the name of the father.’

‘That is how it has been.’

‘Should you let the world know your secret?’

‘He passed the exam on his own merit. Just give us that certificate and let us go,’ the mother intervened.

‘You don’t understand woman,’ he rebuked, ‘He is no longer a child. When he goes to college, he will be in the world of men. He has to stand amongst them and what will he be in their midst with half a name!’

All certainty cracked. Anmol stood there, confused and distraught. He felt weak, unsteady, alone and wondered why his mother would lead him to such a future.

‘That name, whatever it is, will be of more value than the benefits of merit,’ the officer continued.

‘Let this be his destiny then,’ she mumbled.

‘You are being selfish,’ he spoke harshly to the mother, ‘Legally, I can’t stop you, but remember Shakuntala finally handed over the child to Dushayanta.’

With these words, he signed and closed the file, and stood up. The mother took a step back. Anmol moved and they made way for the officer to pass. The clerk handed the certificate to Anmol who held it tentatively. The mother passed him the bag and he placed the certificate in it.

The blazing summer sun veiled their features and they walked as strangers. Looking ahead and not at each other, they hid their bruises. Cemented by a silence that tore them apart, they could not speak. Nor pretend. For they could read each other. Their shadows walked ahead, thick parallels that maintained a steady distance between them. The officer had separated them and placed a presence there.

Unknown to them, it had slipped out with them and walked along.

Anmol felt it, unyielding, like concrete. He could not find a face for it nor give it a voice. It was mute. Solid. Muscular. Broad square muscles. Anmol felt small and his mother also seemed tiny, compared to the broad gap that marked the presence.

The jostling crowd at the station filled up every nook and corner. The presence passed through them, clearing the space. And then, it dissipated. They exchanged a few words regarding the train and its timing, platform number, tickets. Once they boarded, the silence set in again. Their eyes were glued to the outside view. The mother did not point out the landmarks to him. He had suddenly outgrown all that. The officer had snatched him from her and placed him in the world of men.

They entered the house with the certificate and mother kept it safely in the cupboard. It was an accomplishment, even though it no longer brought either joy nor pride.

In the mirror Anmol could see his image. His face was angular like his mother’s. They both had big eyes and thin tight lips. His ears were large. Different from hers. Anmol sat in a corner and looked at the room. There was nothing in it that could belong to an outsider. Not a shoe or a handkerchief or a comb. Except maybe his two large ears.

He watched his mother, a mother who had been the face of his world; the only one he had ever known. She had walked with him for every step of his existence. He had somehow felt that her journey began with him as his began with her. He had taken this for granted. But she had been in the world much before him; much before he was born. She had a life before she became mother, when she was someone else. And he did not know that someone, could never know her, and had never tried to. She was always so definite, so still, so complete, a face that sealed away the past. Her past did not exist for him, so it had not bothered him. But today he had felt it. Felt related to it, through it, to a man, a father. He wanted to know, ask. What would she say, not say?

The tremors within shook the stillness of the room.

He saw his mother reading his uneasiness, sensing his turbulence, but not uttering a word. The walls seemed to cave in, and he ran out. She did not stop him but waited for him to return. When night set in, she got up and left, leaving the door ajar, creaking on its hinges in the darkness.

Anmol went to the market square. The greasy smell of oil and the honking of matadors and lorries led him there. Temple bells clanged and frogs jumped about in puddles of stale water. Men, scarred with age and toil, sat on top of the carts they had pulled all day. Better-dressed men sat apart. Their throats gurgled with alcohol and they held cards in their hands. They were loud, rough and animated, playing to win. One man with a shaggy beard caught Anmol’s attention. He played cards with studied recklessness that displayed confidence. He noticed Anmol and winked at him while arranging the cards. Anmol sat next to him and the man passed him his drink. Anmol’s head burned with lightness. Cards floated all around.

The man won the round. Money flowed from many pockets into his hands. He collected it. Then he sat on his haunches and spread his arms. Shaking them vigorously, he moved rhythmically, imitating a rooster. And then he placed his hands on the ground and did a somersault. He was the winner and cheered by all!

The cards were re-distributed, and the next round began. Midway, the man went into the liquor shop. The others continued to play. They waited for him. When he did not return, they looked at Anmol.

‘Throw a. card,’ they chuckled.

He didn’t know the game. But he threw in a card. He knew he was playing someone else’s game. Someone who left him holding the cards of a game he did not know. The boisterous insistence of the others coerced him on. He played on, card after card, till he had none left. Then he was asked to put out the money. He did not have any. They shouted at him and called him a cheat. He looked around for the man with the shaggy beard. But the man had disappeared.

The others were yelling at him, ‘Put any amount, anything that you have…’

He had nothing!

‘I was just watching…’ The group shouted, ‘Liar … he played!’

On behalf of the player. He was not the player. The player was the man with the shaggy beard, a man who cheated, a man who disappeared, a man who threw him into a losing game…

The other players threw down their cards and rolled up their sleeves.

‘Go home and get your father so he can pay these rogues,’ a voice suggested.

‘Father…’ He shook his head in dismay.

They did not understand. ‘Take us to him, he will have to pay,’ said the card players.

Anmol ran into the shadows, but they leapt on him and their fists pounded him. They were strong and experienced. All around them was noise and over it, the clamour of boots and police whistles. The men loosened their grip. And he ran towards the crowd, but whichever direction he took, the maze of men led him back to the cards.

A policeman held him by the wrist. Everyone was looking at him shouting loudly, waving their arms violently.

‘He is a cheat,’ they said. They knew that the game was over for him.

Anmol stood still and faced the policeman. But the latter did not respond. He was looking at something behind him. Perhaps the man had returned. He saw the entire crowd follow the policeman’s gaze. Then he knew who it was. It was his mother. In the midst of a hostile ring of men.

‘He is my son,’ she said in a calm voice, her face harder than usual.

The policeman took a step back. Anmol had been claimed. Publicly. You are still my son even if… as she used to say…. The policeman loosened his grip. ‘Why is he here then?’ he enquired.

‘I will ask him,’ she replied, coming forward. ‘But tell me, did he steal anything? Did he beat anyone?’ The crowd started petering out. ‘Some men here say he owes them money,’ the policeman pointed towards the carpet.

The mother took off her bangle and held it in her palm. But the card players had left by then.

The policeman let Anmol go with his mother. They walked homewards with unhurried steps. He knew he was born to a woman who had no fear within. She had a harsh face, the face of hard times. That was the truth of his birth, his only truth, the truth as stated in his file of life.