A Beautiful Lie (2 page)

‘Yes, I am listening,’ I replied, my voice croaky and faint.

‘Good. Now you must continue as normal. Keep him in good spirits by going about your usual routine – and that includes school. I have to go but I’ll check on you tomorrow. You come to me if you need anything, OK?’

I nodded slowly. Doctorji looked me up and down with his usual stern expression but his eyes were softer, like when he and Bapuji spoke of old times. Turning to go, he stopped and looked back to me.

‘And where’s that brother of yours?’ asked Doctorji.

‘He comes and goes . . .’ I muttered.

‘More goes than comes, I’ll bet. Damned fool of a boy, playing at being a man. I’ll give him a piece of my mind when I see him, don’t you worry. It’s no way for an older bhai to behave,’ said Doctorji, shaking his head and turning on his heel.

I felt as heavy and immovable as an ancient tree as Doctorji marched in the direction of the market. Fixing my eyes on his briefcase, I watched until the black square bobbed out of view. For the first time in my life, I was afraid of walking through the doorway of our home. I closed my eyes and stepped into the darkness.

Chapter 2

Entering the room slowly, I patted the cool, dark clay and leant my forehead against the wall. It made me feel better, to touch that familiar and solid wall. Bapuji used to say our house was made up of two parts clay, two parts water and two parts pure goodwill. For me, it was a sanctuary.  A place where I knew Bapuji would always be waiting, where he’d have all the answers to my many, many questions.

I knew it was just a mud hut made up of one small space but it was my home. It did have one memorable feature – there was a partition which split the room in two. A partition made up solely of old books stacked floor to ceiling, three books deep. For a while it had been the wonder of the market town community, many of whom had never seen so many books in one place.

After some guidance from Bapuji, I gave tours of our home, pointing out various books and ending the visits by reciting some poetry by Tagore, then bowing and ushering the newly enlightened group out of the front door. Bapuji always said, ‘Education and literature, my boy, we are all deserving of that. If you have it, you must not deprive others of it.’ Then he would quote some poetry.

My education started at school but continued at home. Sometimes it was a bit much, having to live with so much knowledge. You only need a little bit to survive. Like where to get clean water or how to mend your clothes, and who you could swap things with to have enough food for the week. Real things, practical things. Nobody would swap books. Believe me, I tried, but the usual answer was, ‘I can’t eat books, can I?’ It amazed Bapuji that people couldn’t comprehend that letters, words and books made you richer than you could ever imagine. Even I had difficulty understanding what he actually meant but that was just what he was like. Give Bapuji a good book and he could go without washing, talking or even eating for days on end.

Bapuji had collected his wall of books over the course of forty years. He had traded, worked for, salvaged, repaired, begged and bought each book with a passion that was obsessive. Often, late at night, I’d find him sitting next to the partition in only his dhoti, poring over a book. Upon hearing my scuffling feet, he’d tear his bright eyes away from the page and smile deeply and with such pleasure that it would make me smile too. He’d say, ‘Come, you must see this’, and I’d go and sit next to him, fighting to stay awake as he pointed out strange and wonderful facts about places on the other side of the world or animals I couldn’t believe existed.

The air now felt thick as I shuffled slowly into the room towards Bapuji’s bed. It was particularly cool and dark on this side of the room since very little sunlight sneaked in through the small window. His low bed was pushed up against the far wall close to his wall of books. I’d spent a lot of time in the charpoi, listening to him reading aloud passages from old books full of strange language that I didn’t always understand. I’d often go to sleep listening to Bapuji’s voice and have extra­ordinary dreams about places I’d never been and people I’d never seen. That was the idea, according to him – that through books you could lead a thousand different lives and have a million different adventures.

The pain in my stomach was now a dull ache. I took a breath and pushed it deeper inside. I moved towards the only other piece of furniture in the room, a low stool on which I often sat and read to Bapuji. I picked it up and sat down on it next to the bed.

I watched as Bapuji slept, chest rising and falling in between intervals of ragged gasps and coughs. His hair was mostly grey now, cut short and thinning on top. We shared the same dark-brown eyes, sharp nose and nut-brown skin. Sweat trickled down his forehead on to his sallow cheeks and clung to his rough salt-and-pepper stubble. He opened his eyes and, not for the first time, I saw how weak and frail he had become. Dark rings circled his eyes and made me think of those pictures of pandas we’d seen in an old encyclopedia.

Bapuji smiled, his face creasing into a hundred little lines. ‘Fault lines,’ he called them. ‘Our very own fractures in the earth’s crust.’ I didn’t know what he meant but that wasn’t unusual. He tried to sit up, weakly managing to haul himself into an upright position. I sat there tensely but didn’t try to help because he hated it when I fussed over him. He propped himself up and looked straight at me with his bright eyes.

‘Spoke to Doctorji then, did you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll be OK, Bilal.’

‘I know you will.’
Being dead is not OK
.

‘You’ll be OK too. You’ll need to write to my sister and make arrangements.’

‘I will, don’t worry.’
I don’t want to live with your sister
.
This is my home
.

‘It’s beautiful in Jaipur and my sister will look after you properly. And the history in Jaipur, my boy . . . I envy you.’

‘It’ll be fine, Bapuji.’
I don’t care about Jaipur, I don’t care about stupid history and I won’t be OK
.

And that was it. No more said. A vicious disease was eating him from the inside out and he wouldn’t even talk about it.

‘What’s the news today, son? Have those vultures come to a decision yet?’

I held myself rigidly because I knew what was coming next.

‘Harpies, the lot of them. They just don’t understand, do they? The soul of India can’t be decided by a few men gathered around a map clucking like chickens about who deserves the largest pile of feed. They can talk all they want – until the end of time, for all I care – but Mother India will set them straight. Look at your friends, Bilal. Do they care that we’re Muslims? We’ve sat and eaten with Chota’s family on many occasions. Are we supposed to hate them because they’re Hindus? Take Manjeet – I’ve known his family since before you were born. I was at Manjeet’s father’s wedding. They’re Sikh yet we share very similar ancestry and have many things in common. We’ll always have differences but our similarities will keep us together. India will never be broken, never be split. Do they think this hasn’t happened before? That we haven’t been to the brink before? Do they believe India is made of clay and can be shaped according to their petty ambitions? We’ve suffered this before and will again, but those men – those villains and these visiting British – will never break the back of India. Not in my lifetime, son, not in mine.’

Bapuji was shaking with a fury I’d never seen before and his eyes were dark pools of ink that I could no longer look into. I wanted to scream, ‘
You’re wrong
.’ Only yesterday I had stood with Saleem in the marketplace listening to the wireless as Nehru-ji had spoken of the partition plan, of the new world we were going to create whether we liked it or not.
How can they do that? Take a map and say, ‘Here’s the line. Choose which side you want to stand on.’
Partition was like laying flat a piece of coarse material and cutting it as steadily as you could down the middle. The only difference was, once the first cut was made, no amount of sewing and stitching could make that material whole again.

Bapuji hadn’t been out of his room for almost a month. He hadn’t seen the changes in the people, the atmosphere in the market, the elders arguing around the market square. There had been trouble and violence last year, but it had died down and life had returned to normal for a while. But since the partition plan had been announced, everything had changed. There were stories of mobs all over the country, burning people’s houses, killing women and children, and political parties recruiting young men to fight and further their cause. India was succumbing to a cancer, like the one that was eating Bapuji alive. A disease from within.

A sharp pain in my stomach that had started earlier when I spoke to Doctorji made my stomach cramp in anxiety. I squeezed my eyes shut against the pain. Why couldn’t he sense it? Everything was changing, everything was wrong. India was on the verge of disaster! I wanted to scream at him, ‘
I don’t care about India or politicians or vultures or anything like that. I only care about you!
’ Instead I went over to his bed, held him close and lay down next to him. After a while, I felt him dozing gently and disentangled myself from his arms. I looked at him sleeping so peacefully.

I had kept the partition plan from Bapuji thinking that in his ill state it could kill him. I knew now that the effect of the news would in many ways be a lot worse. It would break his heart.

It was at that precise moment that I knew exactly what I had to do. I decided that no matter what happened or what people said, I would make sure that my bapuji would never know what was happening in the outside world. It didn’t matter that people were preparing for the worst and that India was on the verge of something big, a monsoon the likes of which they’d never seen, that, once cleared, would change everything. I swore an oath that Bapuji would die not knowing the truth of what was to come. He would die thinking that India was as he remembered it and always would be. At that precise moment, I decided to lie. I set my shoulders and made to leave the room.

‘Bilal,’ croaked Bapuji.

‘Yes, Bapuji?’

‘Where’s my melon?’

I left the room, salty tears stinging my face as I walked out into the light.

Chapter 3

The sun shone brightly into my eyes as I left the house, and there they were. My three closest friends. They were waiting for me, heads bowed, standing in a semicircle. I knew they’d have waited for Doctorji to walk past the chai stall and chased him down, so they knew about Bapuji. I also knew that he wouldn’t have told them anything but that they’d have worked it out anyway. I didn’t want to speak, not really, not right now. I stepped forward to complete the circle and stood looking at my feet.

To my left there was Chota, the smallest of us but also the bravest. If I told him that the angel of death was coming for my bapuji and we were not to let him take him from us, he would spit on his palms and bunch his fists ready to fight. On my right stood Manjeet, tall, skinny and with a bright-orange turban tied tightly on his head. He only spoke when he had something worth saying and I always felt comfortable with him, whether we were talking or not. Lastly, in front of me, stood scruffy-haired Saleem, who many thought was my brother because we were always together. ‘Joined at the hip, you two,’ Bapuji would say, and he was right. We were separated only when we had to go home.

We stood in a circle and stared at our feet for a long time. Finally, I looked up and they looked up too. In their faces I saw only the same sadness I’d seen in Doctorji’s face. I would need their help if I was to succeed with my plan and fulfil my oath.

There was silence for a while after I’d told them what I wanted to do. I thought they’d try to persuade me it was wrong, but they just looked at their feet. Then Saleem put his hand on my shoulder and nodded.

‘We understand, brother. We’ll help you.’

I didn’t know what else to say so we went to our favourite vantage point, a derelict old house now used for storing dried chillies, from where you could see over the whole market. I picked up a stick and started drawing random shapes in the ground.

‘You all know how people like to visit my bapuji and give him news,’ I started.

‘That’s because he’s got the best stories and –’ Chota stopped talking when I glared at him.

‘Anyway, we have to stop everybody visiting,’ I said rather sharply.

‘What, everybody?’ asked Manjeet, who, not unusually, had been very quiet up until this point.

‘Yes. Everybody.’

‘There are other ways he might find out,’ said Manjeet.

‘He likes to read the newspaper,’ said Saleem.

‘He hasn’t seen a newspaper for a while so maybe we can put that off,’ I replied.

‘But when he does want to read one, what then?’ asked Manjeet.

‘Well, we’ll deal with that when it happens,’ I replied, a little flustered, arms folded across my chest.

Saleem, in his usual way, gathered us all into a huddle and put his arm round my shoulder. I smiled at him appreciatively.

‘OK, tell us how we’re going to do this.’

I picked up the stick again.

‘Right, tomorrow, you, Chota, will not be in school,’ I said, pointing the stick at him.