Translated from the Marathi by Shriya Ketkar
Jamila Javad began working in our office on a fine morning during one of those short, chilly days of November. She reached the post of manager after working with us for just a few weeks, even before the arrival of spring, rising through the ranks and settling into her position, as gracefully as one rises in a mehfil.
I knew nothing about her before she joined the office. I understood her slowly, during interactions over work. Once, in passing, she mentioned having been abroad. [Her banter in English, her short, bob-cut hair, and the careful manner of her walk had already clued me into that fact.]
She lived on a block somewhere near Malabar Hill, with her father. Mr. Javad was a retired education officer [who had done a stint abroad], and there was no one else at home [“My mummy died quite early, I don’t even remember her face anymore!”] .There were some servants to help, and a car with a chauffeur to drive it . Since Mr. Javad seldom went out, the driver’s only job in the entire day was to ferry Jamila to, and from the office.
Jamila Javad wasn’t particularly beautiful; but her polished nails, short hair, lipstick, high heels, and attire nevertheless made sure she cut an attractive figure. She didn’t have much of a personality - but she achieved and carefully cultivated one through her flawless English, soft speech, and cheerful manner. Being aware of this, she took great care to maintain all three.
The cabin she took over was extremely old. It had belonged to an officer on the verge of retirement, and this was perhaps the reason it was in a state of extreme clutter. When it passed into Jamila’s hands, she had decorated in her own specific way. The walls were painted a light parrot-green. A few scenic paintings were hung on the wall. An image of Gandhi was put up in the centre of the cabin, directly facing the entrance. [This had existed before: but had languished crookedly in a corner.] Curtains came up on the windows, and a table in the centre of the room, topped with a heavy black glass.
Whether it was because we shared the same religion, or for some other reason, Jamila Javad was quite open in her behavior with me. We often chatted in the cabin, and she asked for my opinion on a variety of things. Once, she asked for my thoughts on the decor of the room.
“It’s splendid,” I responded. “You’ve truly brought a dull government office to life.”
She merely laughed at my praise.
Often, entering her cabin for work, or otherwise, I began to spot her, staring in rapt fascination at the rays of sunlight that fell onto her table. Throughout the day, the beams would change their shapes and positions, disappearing as evening fell, and Jamila Javad used to watch this game, quite forgetting herself. I often saw her gaze pinned to that light, but whenever she spotted me standing there, my shadow obscuring the rays, she used to break out of her trance.
“What? Don’t you like watching the light play like this?” She had asked me once, suddenly, when I had interrupted her reverie.
*
As the weather turned, and spring announced its arrival, it was as though she underwent a transformation. She blossomed, the way trees turn over a new leaf, her step quickened, and as the cold receded, a gentle warmth seemed to emanate from her behavior.
Jamila Javad seemed to change, inside and out. Her smile seemed more inviting and she worked with more efficiency. Dealing with the problems at her table deftly and with enthusiasm, she used to sit and chat with me, sometimes, almost as soon as she was done with work.
Once, I took an urgent file to her, right after lunch. She was leaning back in her chair, her eyes closed. One arm resting on the chair’s edge, the other flat on her forehead. I felt the urge to leave, but she became aware of my presence, opening her eyes slowly.
Seeing me, she gathered herself, sensing my discomfort, as she asked, “Something important?”
“Yes.”
“Please sit.”
I sat in the chair in front of her, explaining the case at hand. Noting her suggestions, I rose to leave, when she asked, “In a hurry?”
“Shouldn’t this response be sent off?”
“Isn’t it sent in the evening anyway? Do sit, we’ll have some tea.”
And that was how I had tea with Jamila Javad for the first time.
“Have some, please”, she urged me, pouring the tea from a special tray, into cups.
“Why are you so hesitant around me?” She asked me as she brought her cup to her lips, slowly sipping the hot beverage.
This only flustered me further, and I somehow shook my head in denial. But she seemed to understand the exalted position she occupied in mind, through my dazed gesture.
“Please don’t consider me an official. Her tone was pleading as she said, “I consider you a friend, and I hope you consider me one too, I truly want us to treat each other as equals.”
In that moment, her earnest desire for friendship filled me with emotion. I barely managed to whisper, “ Thank you...” back to her.
“Would you like to read my diary?” she asked me one day.
“Your diary?”
“Yes. I keep a diary, and I’m the only one who ever reads it. I would like someone else to read it too. For you to read it..”
“Me?”
“Why? What’s the problem? I’m giving it to you, without holding anything back. However, if you don’t want to read it…”
“No, no, nothing like that…I would love to read it! How could I not, when it's coming from you?”
She laughed, pulled open the bottom drawer of the table, and handed me a diary.
*
Jamila Javad’s diary began on the day she started working with us. The first few pages were filled with her new experiences at the office, followed by her promotion. The light green colour from the walls of her office stained some pages. There was a mention of me. ( “I consider him a friend, and I think he knows that”) A few paragraphs had been dedicated to her chauffeur, Abdullah. She talked about how his slow, bulky body disgusted her, and about how she blamed her father for hiring this uncivilised man to work for them. On the same page, she wrote about her father, “He never says anything, just sits there, taking drags of his cigar. Always in his own world. Doesn’t talk to me much either. Watching him sit there like that, it makes me melancholy. I hate being in the house...”
And then spring dawned, and the changes I had noticed in Jamila Javad seemed to be stamped on every page of the diary. Spring had exerted an astonishing pull on her. She had the urge to hold on to every single moment of that season, and there was a strange interplay of emotions within her. Sometimes , she was awash with joy, and at other times, she was filled with a strange longing. In some moments, she felt as light as a feather. In others she felt as though her life were being wasted, like a ray of sunlight- starting off bright, getting longer and longer, stretching, as the day went on, before vanishing into nothingness.
She knew why she felt this way. The need for a man, for male company, had arisen within her. She felt her emotions to be a reflection of her innermost desires, which she freely admitted to… ‘I feel like I need someone who loves me deeply.’
Her entries ended with that sentence.
*
I thanked her for trusting me with her diary, to which she responded with her usual laugh, accepting my gratitude.
The season ended, with the last of winter retreating completely, like a scattered, defeated army, and summer arrived to take its place.
Jamila Javad however, desperately attempted to hold on to those intervening days between the seasons within her, around her. She had an air-conditioner fitted in her cabin, and began drinking cold water from the refrigerator. Summer’s assault was held at bay at her door.
I don’t know how she met Faiz, and I never asked her. He hadn’t entered her life during the days documented in her diary. She must have met him that summer, somehow, somewhere.
Faiz was extremely skinny, nearly skeletal. His arms were bony, and his legs were thin, almost twig-like. The clothes he wore seemed too large for his body. He had been deeply involved in politics for a long time, and was now a communist. He was the secretary of some union, and had done several stretches in jail. His life was extremely unstable.
He first came to meet Jamila Javad in the office, and soon became a frequent visitor. Still, I didn’t pay much attention to him. But then, the timing of his visits changed. He started coming at the end of the day, when she was leaving. Sometimes, they lingered in her cabin, and sometimes, they left instantly.
Once, I went to Jamila Javad with some work, while he was present. She introduced him with the words “Meet my friend, Mr. Faiz.” Faiz responded with some formal courtesies, and I left quickly. After that, I always saw him there.
Faiz was late one day. Jamila Javad was ready to leave, and the chauffeur arrived with the car.
“Why hasn’t Faiz sahab arrived today?” She asked me uneasily, almost whispering to herself.
“Was he going to?”
“Yes.” She was lost in thought, until she suddenly asked me “Tell me, what do you think of Faiz?
”I laughed. “Why, he seems lovely!”
The answer didn’t appear to satisfy her. I struggled to understand why my opinion on this mattered to her, when she continued, “I like that man—he truly is a good person. Blessed with a gentle, loving heart.”
Her countenance suddenly became serious as she looked at me. And even then, I saw her eyes brimming over with love for him, but I couldn’t figure out how to respond.
But a few days later, I saw them at a table, in a restaurant in Fort. Both of them saw me. and Jamila Javad signalled for me to join in.
She seemed to be in a state of incredible happiness, and she opened up to me instantly. “We are something more than friends now! We’ve decided to get married!” she exclaimed.
“Congratulations… heartiest congratulations!” I blubbered, not finding anything else to say at the moment. I wondered again why she told me her secrets, why she trusted me at all. I began to see it as a sign of her innocence.
In the span of that hour, Jamila Javad seemed to twitter like a bird. She talked on and on, about this thing and that, draining several cups of tea. Finally, when Faiz and I both lit cigarettes, she asked for one too.
“I used to smoke sometimes when I was in England.” She saw the surprise in my eyes and laughed. “For different reasons back then. When it was very cold, or when I felt lonely; when I missed my home, or my country!” And then she turned to Faiz and asked, “Do you mind, dear?”
“No - no, certainly not.” Faiz exhorted, being aptly respectful of her wishes.
When we rose to leave, she whispered to me alone, “You already know, I’ve never kept anything from you. We decided to get married only recently. And I’m going to give you my diary tomorrow to explain everything.”
*
This is how Jamila Javad’s diary came into my hands again.
Skipping the parts I’d already read, I only read the parts yet unknown to me. She had laid out her first meeting with Faiz, and the subsequent feelings for him in great detail. They had met at a social conference, and she instantly liked his calm nature.
Little details about their love story, previously unknown to me, had been written down meticulously in the diary. She had expressed her feelings first. I had noted Faiz’s respectful behavior, but it showed even more clearly through those pages. On one page, she poured out her heart’s distress because he hadn’t even kissed her yet, on another, she wrote about how she took advantage of the car’s movements to fall into his body!
*
What was culture?
The two of them had discussed it at length.
“… I think ... culture is our thoughts, and behavior! Even the kind of mutton we eat, whether goat, lamb, or cow… even that forms a part of culture!” She had debated with him.
Faiz laughed at her arguments.
“Do you know.?” He told her, “If we’re talking about mutton, then I even eat pork!”
“Really?” she asked him in shock.
“Really.”
“How horrible! I didn’t eat beef even when I was in Europe.”
“Oho! So your habits are your culture?”
“Don’t mock me, please!”
Sometimes, thoughts about their future made them uneasy. Would they work out? Would they be happy?
Quelling her doubts, Faiz had told her, “I’ve fallen in love with your personality. Wherever you are, and however you are, that will never change. Because your nature will always remain within me.”
After this, Jamila Javad’s diary took a serious turn. Faiz and Jamila had decided to get married, and now she was in a rush to tell her father everything. With that goal in mind, she introduced Faiz to her father:
….He was smoking his cigar, like always, when we entered the room. ( This time, he was actually chewing on the cigar! Eww!). At first, he ignored me like he always did, but the moment he saw Faiz’s figure behind me, his aloof behavior vanished. His gaze shifted, and he stared at me in astonishment. Almost fearfully, he asked me , “Why is this person with you?”
He didn’t even ask Faiz to sit down. ( He should have at least learnt some manners after his trips to England!) He unloaded a barrage of questions at him.
“What do you do?”
“I work in the Communist party.”
“Communist?”
“Yes…”
Father was stunned for a minute. But I saw the furrows forming on his forehead, and understood the contempt he felt for Faiz within him.
“Bolshevik or Manshevik?”
Faiz laughed heartily at this!
“There’s none of that anymore, Javed sahab! They were two factions of the Russian revolution. A lot has changed since then, a lot of water has flown through the Volga!”
“Water? Or blood?”
“Both!”
“Indecent people! Cruel!”
I was so angry at my fathr! There was no need to call him indecent! Faiz is so decent!
Both of them were silent for a few moments. Then father rose from his seat. With his hawk-like gaze fixed on Faiz, he asked him, “You want to marry my daughter? Huh?”
“Yes.”
“But I don’t agree! You’ll ask me, ‘Why?’ But I’m not bound to answer you! This is my choice! My decision!”
“But—”
“I know what you’re going to say! You’re going to give me a lecture on women’s rights and Muslim women moving beyond the veil, and the changes that have happened because of it! Well, I don’t need a lecture from you!’ Besides, my notions of women’s freedom are different from yours, and those are the ones I bring into my house! You are clearly smart enough to understand my decision. From now on, you must not meet my daughter. I hope you’ll behave in a way that does not cause a rift between the two of us!”
“And if that is not within my power?”
“Then? Then, you are responsible for the consequences that follow.”
Faiz would have continued to argue with him! But he controlled himself after I signalled to him. He left instantly.
*
“What else did he say?” Faiz asked me the next day.
“I think you know that already. He says I’m ‘foreign-returned’, and you haven’t seen the continents in your sleep! We don’t match at any level.”
“I don’t understand- why is he so opposed to this?”
“You won’t understand! My people have studied, travelled abroad; but they haven’t absorbed the values that education brings. This is a weird phenomenon! There was a wave of education among us, at one point. There was a knowledge that other communities had studied, and we were being left behind. That’s why they took part in this race. But you know, how eating too fast leads to indigestion? Something like that happened. Education became something to parade about! But they remained ignorant at heart.”
“But then what do we do?”
“We are going to get married! Despite my father’s opposition. I don’t see another way. I don’t think he’ll yield to friendly persuasion and mediation!”
The moment I arrived home, my father turned his gaze slowly towards the clock, and then back to me.
The clock said seven. My father was silently questioning my whereabouts for the past hour and a half, asking me to account for them. I gave him nothing, and headed silently into my room.
What if this happens everyday? What if he begins insisting that I come home early? This is a new kind of mental harassment. I don’t know how long I’m going to be able to take it. Because I’ve never been through anything like this before…never experienced anything like this…
*
“I can’t live in that house anymore! I can’t do this anymore, Faiz! Tell me a way out of this!” I asked Faiz today.
“What happened? Why are you saying this?”
“Nothing happened! Nothing is happening, and that is too much! I feel like even Abdullah is spying on me for father!”
“Don’t stay in that house.”
“Where should I go?”
“Stay in a hostel temporarily, and live with me after marriage.”
“I’ve already thought about this. I’m just gathering the courage to leave that house….do you know what my father thinks? That I’m never going to leave. That I’ll never be able to go against him…that I’ll never be able to live alone, independently…I want to prove him wrong. I’ve made my decision.”
And Jamila Javad’s diary ended there.
*
The day I handed the diary back to her, was the day she had left her house, without the intention of returning.
“I’ve decided not to go back home.” She told me in a slightly worried tone. “I made up my mind as I left the house this morning.”
She didn’t have the courage to tell her father about her decision. She had another plan for that. Abdullah came to get her that evening, as usual. She handed him a letter, saying, “I’m going to be late. Go, and give my father this letter!”
Abdullah lingered, not moving. He stared at Jamila with his cool, snake-like gaze. He had guessed what the letter contained.
I saw Jamila Javad squirm under that look, as though she had been stung. Uneasy, she raised her voice at him suddenly, “Tum chale jaao!”
Still, Abdullah wasn’t quick to leave. Like a slow-moving python, he backed away, leaving the cabin door to bang shut behind him in his insolence.
When his lumbering shadow had disappeared from her table, Jamila Javad looked up. There was a strange fear in her eyes. “I’m afraid of that man. He’s savage—like an animal.”
But when she returned to the office the next day, the fear in her eyes had disappeared. In fact, she seemed somehow freer, lighter.
“I slept so peacefully yesterday. I feel like I truly came into my own, found myself. There’s just one thing that still weighs on me- I still don’t know my father’s response. But I don’t think I will! He won’t come to me! Then why should I worry about his anger?”
Faiz arrived in the evening, like always. They were in no hurry. They sat in her cabin past office hours, and asked me to stay. They had decided to submit a notice for their marriage in the court the next day. Jamila Javad told me, “I won’t be coming to the office tomorrow. I have a lot of errands to finish.”
It was quite dark when the three of us left. This was the first time I actually saw her walking on the road, instead of having a car take her anywhere... Going along with them for a few minutes, I bade goodbye, and turned towards the station. The two of them continued on.
However, as I turned, I suddenly felt as though someone was following them, watching them. I stood still for a while, watching their tall, shadowy figures as they moved away from me. But I didn’t see anyone else.
But my illusions were real! When Jamila Javad returned the day after her leave, she called me into her office.
“My father has employed some goons to threaten and harass Faiz, do you know?”
I told her about the feeling I had had, about the phantasmic figure following them.
“Your instincts are correct.” She told me, “We felt that man tailing us the moment you left. He was signalling to us and saying something disgusting. Continuously mocking us. He followed us until we got near the hostel. But we ignored him.”
“This could be a coincidence.”
“We’ll see.”
The three of us left the office that day, and started walking. Suddenly, she said, “Look—”
We looked in the direction Jamila was pointing. There were three people on the opposite side of the road, standing under a lamp-post. Upon seeing us, one of them threw his cigarette away, as if getting ready to leave.
“That’s him- that’s the man from yesterday!” She said again.
Faiz laughed to himself. Jamila Javad’s feet seemed to hesitate, but Faiz took her hand and made her walk. We began walking slowly and cautiously along the road.
As we moved along, Faiz told her, “Ignore them! Now that we’ve decided to get married, things like these are bound to happen! How can we let them falter our resolve?”
“I haven’t faltered. I’m sad, for a different reason. For my father to resort to such dirty tricks!”
Faiz looked at me as he laughed loudly. “Look—” He gestured to me, “24 years with her father, and she still hasn’t understood him. But I sized him up at our first meeting. When he opposed our marriage, I realized this man would wage war to break us up; no stone would be left unturned.”
We reached the point where our paths diverged, and all of us turned to look back. We saw the three of them at a distance, coming up behind us.
“They won’t do anything! Don’t worry, you can go.” Faiz told me. What could I have done if I had stayed? I took their leave, and continued on my way.
I didn’t see Jamila Javad in the office the next day. I was surprised, but she called me up in the afternoon.
“Those people beat up Faiz last night…” Her voice shook over the phone.
“What!”
“Yes.”
“How is Faiz?”
“Mostly okay. Can you come here?”
“Coming, right now.”
When I arrived, I saw her standing outside her hostel, on the main road.
“Let’s go to Faiz.” Her voice was hurried, and all colour seemed to have left her face. She was unable to hide the turmoil going on inside her.
“I don’t get scared … I’m not scared …” She said this as if to reassure me, “But this kind of hooliganism has really hurt me.”
She suddenly fell silent. I saw tears glimmering in her eyes. We hailed a taxi and journeyed to Faiz’s house in silence.
Faiz wasn’t badly hurt, but he had injuries on his arm and on his forehead. He wouldn’t be able to leave his house for at least eight to ten days.
“What do we do now?” Jamila Javad’s eyes seemed hollow. Faiz looked at her sunken face for a long moment, and then laughed loudly, as he had the last time. But his laughter was punctuated by him wincing in pain, and he broke off.
“We don’t need to do anything.” He said, “But let’s inform the police for now, and ask for some security. Okay?”
Jamila Javad said nothing. She got up, and stood facing away from us, glancing out of the window.
“Will it be enough?”
“Absolutely!” Faiz urged her, “I’m not getting out of the house for now anyway. When I’m better, and need to leave, then we’ll see!”
She wasn’t too satisfied with his assurances. They needed to do more, but even she didn’t know what else to do. Faiz understood her dilemma. In order to boost her spirits, he said , “It’s only a few days, 10-15 at most… and then we can get married.”
It was almost as if she didn’t believe him. I felt as though she had lost all courage…by the look on her face, it seemed like she found everything he was saying quite impossible. But she appeared to force herself to trust his words as she simply said, “Yes.”
We continued to visit Faiz’s home in the evenings, until he recovered completely. The thugs who stood outside our office had vanished. Faiz recovered from his injuries. As the bandage on his arm came off, and the injury on his forehead healed, he said , “I’ll come to your office tomorrow.”
Jamila Javad’s expressions changed instantly, and she became extremely serious.
“Alone?”
“Then? Who should I bring with me?”
“There are so many people in your union—”
“Wah! How can I do that?” he answered , “I’m not scared. I don’t see the need to bring anyone else with me for protection.”
“But what if those people—”
“Nothing can be done about that. I need to come alone, and I’m going to come alone!”
Jamila Javad gave up. There was no point in arguing with him! She knew he wouldn’t listen to her. She had no option but to wait fretfully for him the next day!
*
Faiz arrived in the evening the next day, and the three of us left early. Jamila Javad hesitated a little on the footpath, looking around. But there was no one there. We began walking. I went on my own way, and she continued slowly on hers. Nothing happened that day, and Faiz began arriving regularly from then on, the two of them leaving together every evening.
The days seemed to pass quickly, and Jamila Javad’s lost enthusiasm seemed to return, her sadness disappearing. She began planning for her wedding.
They had decided to get married the day after their notice period ended, and with just eight days left, Jamila Javad was in a frenzy. She busied herself in marriage preparations, buying things for Faiz and herself. She bought woollen clothes and a ring for him.
“In our community, the groom gets a woollen suit and a ring from the bride’s side, I’m going to be the one doing that.”
Those eight days passed in a blur and a commotion. Jamila Javad took a month off from the day of the wedding. The day before the wedding, Faiz arrived as usual, and the two of them spent a long time talking in her office.
“Finally, it’s all over!” She breathed a sigh of relief as she said, “ The unease, the uncertainty…its all over! I feel so much better today…to have passed through all these troubles and come out unscathed!”
That day, I had decided not to go to the office first, but to go to the registrar’s office as a witness to the marriage, attend the wedding lunch, and then return to work as soon as it was done. I arrived at the appointed time and waited.
But the hour came and went, and no one came. I waited for them for an hour, and then got up, feeling a sense of unease. I rushed to Faiz’s house.
Upon getting there, I was told that Faiz had been arrested last night for unlawful activities against the state, and had been placed under prohibitive detention. He had been taken to a prison outside Mumbai overnight.
I was stunned, rooted to my spot. The same silence that had pervaded the air after the first incident with the goons surrounded me again. But I was lost as to why Jamila Javad’s father chose today of all days to do this!
All of this was narrated to me by Faiz’s neighbour, who stood before me for a minute, rather confused by my reaction. He waited for me to leave, but when I didn’t move, he went inside his home and slammed the door in my face.
There was no point in standing there. I rushed to the hostel, asking the warden for permission to see Jamila Javad. But she had left instructions that she wanted to see and meet no one. She wasn’t leaving her room. I had no choice. I left without seeing her.
The next day, I didn’t rush to meet Jamila Javad. I felt I couldn't help her recover from her shock, couldn’t lessen her pain, and therefore decided to give her some time before seeing her again.
But when I went to meet her about ten days later, I learned that she had left the hostel to go live with her father. “She called her father and asked for the motor.” The hostel proprietor explained to me. I said nothing. But as I left, my mind conjured the image of Jamila Javad entering her father’s house, head hanging like that of a fallen general before a victorious army.
I saw Jamila Javad over a month later. She returned after her leave was over, her car stopping at the office gates like always, Abdullah opening the door for her as she stepped out. She entered the office calmly, moving slowly towards the cabin. I followed behind her. She lowered herself into her chair, gesturing for me to sit.
Then she broke down sobbing.
I simply sat before her, dazed. Any words I could have said felt frivolous at that moment. My silence felt like the best way I could commiserate with her right then. But even that began to feel inadequate, so I gently took her hand in mine, trying to tell her how I felt through that touch.
From that day on, I felt as though Jamila Javad’s spirit had been crushed. Her step felt lifeless, her meticulous attention to her appearance gone. Her hair looked matted, and her speech became stilted, curt.
When the grief became unbearable, she used to weep uncontrollably, shaking with sobs.
I still didn’t know how to comfort her properly. But eventually, I began to say, “ It’s not all over yet… Faiz will be out soon…”
“You still believe that?”
“Yes. They have appealed through Habeas Corpus.”
She just shook her head hard, in denial, as if to shake off the hope my words generated like shaking off water from her hair.
“I have no hope. I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
Jamila Javad was filled with despair. She seemed to have lost her sense of being. Some invisible powers seemed to have gained control over her. They made her laugh, made her cry, made her move and talk at their will. She had no desires of her own at all.
Even the chauffeur, Abduallah, started bossing her around. He began entering the cabin, insolently announcing his presence, and Jamila Javad used to follow him, meekly sitting in the car!
Slowly, a new change began taking place in Jamila Javad; something different entirely. An extremely forced smile appeared on her person, as though someone had dragged it across her face. She began speaking in her previous polished and polite manner. She began to enjoy speaking to me again. It looked as though she was regaining the balance she had lost. But this was a very different version of her. Her smile had lost the innocent shyness it used to have. Her speech had lost the authority it used to have. The confidence had gone out of her walk. The very foundations of her being seemed to have crumbled, like a pack of cards, and a new Jamila Javad had been created out of the debris.
Her own heart’s desires seemed to have no room in this new version of her. She seemed unable to regain her willpower, and it looked to me as if she was becoming more and more dependent on Abdullah. The moment he arrived, she used to get up and leave. Abdullah abandoned his previous formality towards her. He began straightaway entering her cabin the moment he arrived. Even his earlier arrogant salute vanished. He began saying “Jaldi chalo” in an authoritative manner. He no longer felt the need to open the car door for her…
I began to feel as though she was happy in his presence, and I found it both weird, and saddening. It made me unnecessarily uneasy. Several disturbing ideas about their strange relationship came into my mind. An image of her sitting in the seat next to him, falling into him as the car turned sharply, filled my head. All her behavior seemed mysterious and secretive to me.
But even those strange days quickly came to an end. That period of Jamila Javad’s life, which I couldn’t understand, which seemed so strange to me, ended, almost as if it had never happened. Her earlier smile made an appearance, her walk regained its former briskness. Her speech became lilting again, and she began to enjoy our conversations like she always did. She began hating Abdullah again, expressing her distaste for his arrogance.
Her willpower was reborn. Her desires re-emerged. Her personality seemed to be flowering again. The old Jamila Javad re-emerged from her sadness… began to slowly forget it., began talking about it. She began making plans for life again.
Seeing her like her old self made me immensely happy. But there was one thing that always nagged at me. A cinema about the most important moments in her life had played out in front of me. But there was a small part of it that had remained unknown to me, and had eluded me. Her strange behavior was still a mystery. It felt like a censor cutting out the most climatic parts of a movie.
The only way to understand that part was to read Jamila Javad’s diary, and I mentioned it to her casually one day, while talking to her. “You’ve given it to me twice, and now I’m asking you for it, for a third time.”
She stared at me for a minute, a serious look on her face. She opened her drawer silently, and pushed the diary towards me.
I was so eager to read it that I left instantly, opening it. I flipped through the pages hurriedly, but the diary had only been filled up to the day Faiz had been arrested. The pages after that day remained blank. The mysterious period of Jamila Javad’s life continued to remain a mystery to me—and would always be so!
Hamid Dalwai [1932-1977] was an Indian journalist, social reformer, activist, and author. He was the founder of the Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal, and the Indian Secular Society. He wrote several books, including Muslim Politics in Secular India in English, and Islamache Bhartiya Chitra (Islam’s Indian Story), in Marathi. The story ‘Jamila Javad’ is part of an eponymous collection of Marathi stories first published posthumously in 2016.
Shriya Ketkar is a PhD student at the Department of English, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Maharashtra. Her research interests include translation, gender, and fiction, as well as the study of Marathi-English translation.