”It is an alley without name, it is an alley that ceases to exist when the moon disappears, but it is an alley all the same and one that says more about Karachi than anything you’ll find on a street map” (2002, p. 330).
They say there is a generation of migrants growing old in Karachi. They may have been from Lucknow, from Delhi, from Hyderabad, but as they grow old, they imagine they have made their way home once more. Giving directions, trying to make their way to addresses once theirs.
I grew up in 1980s ka Pindi where 'abroad' meant Karachi
For the past three years, I have relived these imagined lives, following my own imagined maps, pursuing my own illusory time-lines in Delhi.
I was, until 2012 that is, fairly condescending towards Delhi [yes, yes, growing up in the cultural wasteland that was 1980s ka Pindi where ‘abroad’ meant Karachi, this sounds mighty rich]. But for someone coping with what I refer to as the ‘triple whammy’ of martial law, a convent school education and Islamization, India (if one were to follow my look-East policy) should only have been Calcutta and the Great Tagore Lands. So yes, previous ‘forays’ into the country had meant as student-for-a-month, in the avatar of a self-important conference delegate, the backpacker relegating Delhi to the Nice To Meet You Delhi But Let’s Get Out Of Here Tomorrow realm – such was the hold of the Bengali cultural mafia and saposexual book crushes on Amit types from A Suitable Boy.
Moving here as Bhabi ji et mum to a pre-schooler has changed everything. Changed me perhaps. Allowed me to discover a city where I might make my peace with the loneliness that motherhood brings. I live in a world where most of my significant relationships are now conducted in cyberspace. Where a dad tucks the kid into bed over Skype and a grandmother oversees her grandson’s lunch on a webcam. But then, Delhi has had other streetscapes in store for me: areas I can dub ‘non-locative’ if you were to search for them on a map. Moments in time that I can move about stealthily in the ‘80s ka Pindi I once censured.
So we enter the season of mind games: we are back in Pindi and I am aided and abetted by the significant Rawalpindi population that migrated here at the time of Partition and recreated their Pindi lives in Delhi: the ‘drawing rooms’ I enter. And it seems like they never left. I am still home. Then my Pashtun life, which breathes again after a long sojourn in Oceania. No, not just in all the Pashto I can hear around me courtesy Afghans and medical tourism in the city, but also the Pashto of the bazaar. In Sarojini, in Lajpat – these are the families of the Pashtun Hindus and Sikhs who also moved here in 1947, who have never forgotten ‘home’ and who smile indulgently as I scold my son in Pashto. Who listen in as I slip into Pashto, gossiping with my mum, my sister… oh, and the chronicles we could ink as they share life stories.
So yes, ‘home’ – your Pindi and mine – is constantly changing and I am trying to reconcile myself to the truth that cities move on. But somewhere, somewhere in my sleepy South Delhi, among the sweet-peas and dog-flowers the gardener still plants in the park, in the trees I once loved in that other Pindi, the kite on the branch that now eyes my kid’s sandwich, in the summer drone of the water cooler... hark! They are even playing Pindi-‘80s Reprise just for me.
Delhi has allowed us to run outdoors and play among its built history come spring, to attend open-air concerts in the park, pick up thirty-rupee puppets, ride toy trains, walk to school every morning and buy silk-cotton flowers for the teacher.
Come summer, the heat permits us the treat of boredom every Sunday. We had decided when we moved to Delhi to be a TV-free household. On Sundays, there was no going out in the car, no pressure to clean up and ‘be productive’. Lying around in pajamas instead, reading the papers, moaning about the weather, playing board-games with the boy. By evening, we would be dying to go out for a walk. We would, but quickly run off to buy ice-cream, cold chach from Mother Dairy. All along, I am trying to learn to say Bread And More, not Bread And Butter. Kusum Pahari, not Kachi Pahari. I have given up trying to remember the names for the doppelgängers for Pindi faces; Delhi faces, too, have started responding to Bushra, Saima and Mahwash.
Fall and Dussehra season make for some interesting conversations.
8 a.m. Panic attacks by the then three-year-olds: WHERE IS SITA DU-PATTA, MAMA? WHERE IS SITA DU-PATTA? He has grown all self-righteous my boy, pulling Sita’s ghoonghat to her knees, parading the paper puppet like a triumphant banner, as I walk him to school. ‘Let her breathe, yara.’ Perhaps his words awaken dormant memories of visiting my village in Pakistan, a chador covering my face. But his little heart does not relent; apparently my boy has signed up for the Moral Police.
He channels our tirade about Delhi’s infamous traffic sense.
‘Ravan is so naughty, so naughty Mama. HE DOESN’T LOOK AT THE GREEN MAN CROSSING THE ROAD. DOESN’T LOOK LEFT, RIGHT.’ He is also indignant that Ravan is not ‘returning’ Sita, but it’s mostly just his bad traffic sense. I go to sleep giggling at the image of a ten-headed Ravan at the traffic lights, looking left-right-left-right while a Sita squawks at his side, trying to wriggle her wrist away.
Being his mother’s son, he has sidelined the male protagonist. Ram sounds a bit of a slacker and it all ends when Sita sits in such a bee-yoo-tiful chariot.
Delhi trundles along, morphing into what I call 'Pakistanis ka Cuba'
But all too soon, come December, the city reminds me that I have been altruistic about motherhood courtesy a tadka of selfishness and closing my eyes to the world outside my gate. I remember the terrible, foolish risks I have taken, escaping unscathed. And that it is class and my location that provides for a rape suraksha kavach, playing Happy Families, chasing my boy in the park, dressed for comfort not a character certificate.
I approach the newspapers with a wooden spoon, poking them around a bit. They have delivered enough heart attacks; I now expect the horrors to slither out from between the folds of the paper. Groping, gliding. Waiting to strike me down.
Meanwhile, next year, there are conversations in Amritsar that remind me Toto We Are NOT In Kansas Any More.
Me (to driver in Amritsar): Next time, please take me to the galli where Manto lived.
Driver ji: Aap next time aayengi, aap ko woh ku’an dikhaonga jahan Luv Kush ke kapde dhule thay.
An Indian customs guard will comment to Ms Niece: Aap ke adaab bohut ache hain.
Ms Niece will titter Thankyouuu and later Whatsapp me: Psst what’s ADAAB? (Yara, we are from Pindi Islamabad land, not Muslim social).
My boy is negotiating a minefield of nationalism and family politics.
Who Do You Love More? Mama or Baba?
He is a clever child and knows ‘tis a slippery slope and who knows when Mama-Baba will shift to Afridi-Sachin. So he will reply with a pragmatic I LOVE TOO MANY PEOPLE.
Meanwhile, Delhi trundles along, morphing into what I call ‘Pakistanis ka Cuba’: so many of us here now ‘pining for what we once lost but not going back either’. And now, as good days, acche din, descend upon the city and I hear the rumble of printing machines churning out new and improved textbooks, the clink of prayer beads, I settle down and watch a story I had once seen unfold in other homes, other neighbourhoods.
Hello-ji: my name is Aneela and welcome to my Delhi life.
The author divides her time among working on gender, religion and popular culture, and in baron ki izzat, hum-umro ae apnapan and choton se pyaar.