The Girl wore red pheran and watched the sunset for the first time in months. There were many visitors sauntering on the way of Ghats of Srinagar’s most famous Dal Lake. The wind had a strange echo hidden. That is felt before news of someone’s death. The old must have been dead by now, thought the vendors waiting for the visitors to sip the hot cardamom tea. It is this area which surrounded the Ghats and had always mesmerized Tahira. Tahira was an occasional visitor to this Ghat before the lockdown in Kashmir. Announced like the call of prayer, the trucks, auto-rickshaws would blow loud from the speakers giving calls for the lockdown. This time however, the situation was different. They didn’t announce anything. Only few of them were seen on the latest active night. Tahira wanted to stop the world being shut. She couldn’t. Like the still boats of Dal she kept waiting to harbor her dreams in her bosom. She couldn’t have let this happen, but she was the chosen one. She was chosen to live. Live against all odds.
It was March. The roads were seen empty. The technology including radio and television blasted with the news of virus spread. Orders to stay indoors were made. Everyone was supposed to keep themselves at a distance. There was no rush of lines either in the front of shops, bazaars. People are queuing in front of everything. Srinagar had never witnessed such a thing. It saw a lot of revolutions on the roads, where people were present, in time. It was undergoing a revolution, but this was a death revolution. The visceral emotions were all around. People who were alive were contained in chambers of their own death houses. There was grief, mourning and morose faces everywhere. Yet Tahira with her father left for the only business she had known since her birth, the one where she made bags.
Tahira had been working with her father since she was pulled out of school during a riot. Almost six years then, she had mastered the craft and everyone would not resist in praising it. Her stall was almost near the famous clock tower of Lal Chowk, which was known for the red blood which kept increasing after the unfaithful protests. The virus had just started to spread. Unaware of the protocols run by the Government she spread her stall and waited hours for the customers. It was a strange day for Tahira. Never had she had zero customers. Times had changed, something was missing. She brewed in herself anxiety which was only known to her. She had already started to rationing for the month, week. Her major items including her father’s medicines, food, rice, Dals, eggs. The family had cut down on mutton long before the riots had taken shape. This time they couldn’t even bargain gold for mutton. It was amidst this rationing which Tahira had to in a jiffy wrap her stall and replace the area with the concertina wars which would be placed during the uncalled dusk.
After such mishaps, Tahira had decided to own a staple shop when she would grow old. Unlike her father who had always been merely a hawker. Tahira was aware of the fashion universe though unable to evolve within it she had dreamt of a future with it. She would think of the location, color schemes of the shop, materials to be used. She would even slightly think of the name to which she had concluded ‘The Bags of Tahira Kashmiri’, to be the final. It was in the middle of daydreaming she was pleased with the idea of how both the identities had been utilized. She dreamt of her audiences, countless ‘selfies’ and the pouring admiration from the visitors all over the globe. It was this thought which had kept her going ahead. However, times had changed. She was asked to leave before dusk. She was asked to never come back. She would not even think of the next day least the future. The passion had been murdered; the spark had been locked inside the house. Tahira on a Sunday evening lay unmovable, retired, mourned thinking about her father’s medicines, food, starvation, disease all in the same phase.
Many months had passed from the main announcement day. The town had been ghosted. It is an ordeal to have no business at this hour would think of Tahira. Her father would equally crawl at the odd hour of night thinking of how her only daughter had managed to bring the family alive. While others had succumbed to death due to the virus, this duo of father and daughter had been able to survive. Life was sick, diseased and a lot of them struggled in the chambers of the hospitals. She knew how the scenario would change the geography of her own life. She glared at her father who loved sipping noon-chai when anxious. If only he were allowed one murder, he would have thought of killing the virus.
On a Sunday morning her father went on his regular prattle. He uttered Azaadi at a long stretch and mistakenly served him of the panic-attacks. He also felt that the time was best to read. He opened few verses from poetry especially Urdu and failed. On evenings when it would often drizzle both the daughter and father would sit under the apple tree which was as old as the bag business of the family some hundred years. It stood still and tall giving shade to this pair of the diseased universe. Sometimes Tahira would ask her father to find her while she would hide behind the mighty trunks and branches. This is how time passed by, virus increased and the father and daughter grew old.
*Two months later*
Everyone grew wry of the situation. On a strange Sunday of the next week, loud shrieks disturbed the pigeons sitting calmly on the verandah. The walnut tree had succumbed. It would no longer wait to hide around the apple tree. The shade had expired. Expired to the way humans did. Her father had breathed his last. Almost with a half an hour of pain he had left his isolation partner alone in a wild world.
The mountains had mourned and moved on. The sun rose and set in the given specific time. The next morning after the mourning, Tahira began to work. She crafted bags despite the given orders or protocols of Covid-19 the named virus. She stitched hundred bags a day with a gap of one hour to mourn the corpse of her dead father. The room she owned was no less than a staple shop. It was full with dreamt bags and an audience of a dead corpse protecting the bond of haunting quarantine.
Bio
Takbeer Salati was born and raised in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir. She is currently pursuing PhD in ‘Re-inventing the contemporary space and time of the discourse for Manto’s Short Stories’.(With special references to Roland Barthes concept of literary semiotics). She has presented papers on Saadat Hasan Manto and partition, Semiology and Roland Barthes at various national and international conferences. Her research works can be reached on ‘Akademos’. Other short stories can be reached on Samyukta fiction, mountain ink etc. Her short story ‘Affair with food’ is forthcoming with Muse India
