Aatish Taseer - The Temple-goers

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First published 2010

Copyright Aatish Taseer, 2010

An earlier version of the passage on pp. , beginning A few days later than the Ghalib Academy promised and ending I didnt want to upset his calculations, was first published in the authors Introduction to Manto: Selected Stories (Random House India, 2008).

The moral right of the author has been asserted

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Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-14-193303-0

Aatish Taseer was born in Delhi in 1980. He has worked as a reporter for Time magazine and has written for the Sunday Times, Prospect and India Today. He has also written a travel memoir, Stranger to History: A Sons Journey through Islamic Lands (2009), and a highly acclaimed translation, Manto: Selected Stories (2008). He lives in Delhi and London.

Praise for Stranger to History:

A subtle and poignant work by a young writer to watch V. S. Naipaul

Elegant and fluent, skillfully drawn, his descriptions are unforgettable Guardian

Ought to be read by policy-makers in Whitehall and Washington for its insights into the thinking of angry young Muslim men Spectator

Indispensable reading for anyone who wants a wider understanding of the Islamic world, of its history and its politics Financial Times

By the same author

Non-fiction

STRANGER TO HISTORY

Translation

MANTO: SELECTED STORIES

I will tell you a fact, gentlemen, he went on in the same tone as before, that is, with extraordinary warmth, but at the same time he was virtually laughing, possibly even at his very words a fact the observation and discovery of which I have the honor of ascribing to myself alone; at least, nothing has been said or written about it. The fact expresses the whole essence of Russian liberalism of the sort of which I am speaking. In the first place, what is liberalism, speaking generally, but an attack (whether justified or mistaken is another question) on the established order of things? Thats so, isnt it? Well, my fact consists in this that Russian liberalism is not an attack on the existing order of things, but is an attack on the very essence of our things, on the things themselves, not merely on the order; not on the Russian way, but on Russia itself But at the same time, this is such a fact as has not existed or occurred anywhere at any time since the world began, not among any single people, and therefore this fact is incidental and may pass, I admit. There cannot be such a liberal anywhere else who would hate his very fatherland. How can we explain it among us? Why, by the same thing as before that the Russian liberal is, as yet, not a Russian liberal; by nothing else, to my mind.

The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky

It was just after dinner and on one of the news channels the murder was re-enacted. There was a clap of studio thunder on one side of the split screen, a flash of strobe lightning, the glint of a knife. A hooded figure, his clean-shaven face partly in shadow, pursues a fat girl through a keekar forest. Suspenseful music, punctuated by the crashing of cymbals, plays in the background. The darkened figure catches up with the girl; her eyes widen, her wet lips part in a scream. He plunges a knife into her body at various points. In the next scene, he cuts up her body with a kitchen knife, putting great handfuls of flesh into black bin bags, four in total. Then tying them together, he sets them afloat on a hyacinth-choked canal in whose dark water the red lights of a power station are reflected. On the other side of the split screen a passport-size picture of the girl flashes above the caption 19822008. Shes laughing, her milky, rounded teeth exposed. She seems so unsinkable. I could almost hear her saying, Im twenty-six, running twenty-seven.

I sat in my stepfathers study in Alibaug. It was a high, tree house-like room with ceiling-to-floor windows. Outside, the garden was still, the night punctured at even intervals by white path lights. Beyond the shadows cast by tall, fleshy plants was the sea. It came almost to the garden wall at night and its roar carried up to the room. I turned off the television and the various lamps in the room and made my way down a flight of modern wooden steps with no banister.

Downstairs, a sea breeze carrying cold currents made its way on to the tiled veranda. The Bombay winter. A deceptively mild wind for two weeks in the year, bringing clear skies and disease. The city was sometimes visible beyond the short stretch of water and its outline made Alibaugs mainland villages, with their pale yellow houses and red-tiled roofs, blackening in the sea air, seem like the island.

I sat down in a planters chair and called Sanyogita. There had been trouble between us in the past few days, but I thought the worst was over. Two days before shed asked me not to call so much, then the following night shed written, I am blessed to have you in my life but I need to fulfil the rest of it. Youve been doing that for yourself for some time and you are an inspiration for having done it. Im off to Mars now. I had focused on her saying she was blessed to have me in her life and on the Mars reference, suggesting higher spirits. She only ever referred to interplanetary travel when she was in a good mood. But hearing her voice now, I realized I had misread her state of mind. She was in a taxi on her way somewhere, and frantic.

Its not working, baby; its not working.

Sanyogita, you cant end a two-year relationship on the telephone. And not in a cab. It was an old technique: undercutting her good emotion with cold reason. She became quiet.

Ill come, I added.

I took her silence to mean consent, but she said, with uncharacteristic firmness, I wont call you for a while now. Ill need my time.

I became agitated. Sanyogita, this is no way to end this. Ill come on the first flight tomorrow.

She said something to the taxi driver. The interruption, though momentary, gave me my first intimation of life without her. Her voice returned, its timbre unstable, now strong, now sobbing faintly. Not so long ago, it would have irritated me. But wounded for the last time on my behalf, it felt like one more thing I had taken for granted.