One day my friend Badri came over to my place. We’d been at school together and I hadn’t seen him for a long time. He looked rather shabby, his hair gone grey. His white shirt was muddy and there was a thick layer of dust on his shoes – God knew where he’d been. I recognized him at once, even though he’d changed a lot. He bent down to take off his shoes and when he entered the room, a breeze from the old days came in with him. I looked at him and remembered how we had shied stones at ripe tamarinds hanging on the trees and traded marbles behind the school buildings. I remembered the soft and warm fluttering of the birds we’d killed with our slings. All at once other skies opened out within me.

“What made you think of me after all these years, Badri?” I asked.

“I got your address from Naveen,” he said softly and his voice resounded like a distant rumble of thunder.

He headed for the fridge, his feet making no sound. He’d taken off his shoes and his socks were brown. His quiet yet nimble walk reminded me of a cat.

“You’re still rather sprightly,” I said. “You reminded me of a cat just now!” As I said this, I looked at his moustache that was also tending to grey.

“Cats are enigmatic creatures – have you ever wondered about them?” he asked. “They have such a delicate balance between the physical and the sensory! What we hear as a sound is pure sensation for cats. And I could go on at length about how refined they are. You may say what you like, but cats are highly evolved creatures!”

I had not intended to start him off on a eulogy of cats. I found it strange that we’d met after so many years and here he was, talking about cats. He opened the fridge and after feeling all the bottles to find the coldest one, he threw back his head and drank up all the water at once. I looked at him in bewilderment. He seemed to have changed so much and yet he wasn’t really changed at all. He still had that air of easy self-confidence. Now he looked about for something to eat and started to fix himself a sandwich. He caught me looking at him and said, “I hope you don’t mind the way I’m using your things as if they were mine. I’m really hungry. I’ve walked all the way from Katra.”

“No, it’s okay! Do think of this as your own home,” I said. Even as I said this, I thought it was good Farzana was not at home. She’d certainly have found him odd. I know Ammi always thought him strange. In my bachelor days he’d arrive without warning and freak Ammi out with his eccentric ways and his lack of reserve. He’d stay for weeks, seeming to be in no hurry about anything. He’d been the same in school; he’d come home with me often then too. I belonged to Allahabad but his home was in Azamgarh. He’d turn up on Id and Bakrid and relish Ammi’s sivain. I’d been to his home only once – an old tiled house on a low mud hill, a short distance from the main town. Then some years later he stayed at our place when he was looking for a job. The job hunting went on for months.

Those were days of struggle for me too; I was just setting up in practice as a lawyer. He finally abandoned the search for a job and returned to Azamgarh. He planned to set up an institute for teaching English at his house. He disappeared for several years after that. At least, he did show up a few times but went away almost at once. One day he came and told me he’d got married and that his in-laws lived in Allahabad, in Mutthiganj, where his father-in-law had an ice factory.

From now on, whenever he came to Allahabad he stayed with his in-laws. I can’t remember when he came to my place after that, but he did come once in a while and always without prior notice. This was not surprising to me, I knew his odd ways. After all, we’d spent years together.

He finished eating and stretched himself out in a comfortable position on the sofa. He took out a small box of chuna from one pocket and tobacco from the other and rubbed them together on his palm. When he opened his mouth to pop in this mixture I noticed that his teeth had become quite discoloured. Where he sat near the window, a slanting ray of sunlight filtered in through the thin curtain and rested on his face. It illumined millions of little specks of dust floating on the air and it surprised me that the seemingly clear air had all this dust floating around. Things were not always what they seemed to be, I thought.

Badri suddenly noticed my law files stacked up on the table near the wall and he turned to me – “Well, how are you doing? Practice going well?”

His tone was proprietary, as though he could make my practice go well, even if it wasn’t. When he asked me like that, I began to feel that perhaps it wasn’t going so well after all. The picture of a worn-out lawyer in a black coat rose before my eyes – a lawyer who went to court everyday and came back tired. One who worked hard to make ends meet. That was me, Altaf Ahmad.

In any case, those were days of anxiety for me. This had nothing to do with my personal life. Farzana and I were happy enough together. Of course we had our tiffs occasionally but then, who doesn’t? The fact was that the recent genocide in Gujarat had rattled me. I lived hundreds of miles away from Gujarat, but fear was a river in flood. Surging and swelling, breaking all bounds, fear was spreading in all directions. I was drowning in this flood. So many people had been killed, burnt alive, thousands of people like me. Thousands of homes had been destroyed too. Mine hadn’t. I’d been safe, so far. But fires had begun to rage in my mind.

Sometimes, walking down a road, I’d spot a woman in a burqa. At once my mind, all on its own would begin to calculate how quickly her burqa would catch fire, whether the fire would spread from above or below. I’d think about fire especially when I looked at people with beards. A series of completely unconnected, uncontrolled thoughts had taken hold of me. I’d become strange, perhaps a little too nervous and despairing. After all, no disaster had happened to me. I was leading my very ordinary life, involved with the business of earning my bread. I had never got into any messy politics, at no level whatsoever. I did not subscribe to any organized religion; you could have called me an atheist. Naturally, I never joined any political or religious group. I wasn’t on this side or the other; I had no idea where I was. Lost somewhere in the midst of things, I was trying to get on with my life.

Somehow though, spinning through my humdrum daily round, a splinter had got embedded deep within me. As far as I could tell, I had intentionally harmed nobody. I lived responsibly, like a good citizen. Yet recently I’d begun to notice people looking at me oddly, as though questioning who I was. As though, in some way, I was different from everyone else, perhaps lacking in something. There was nothing I’d done to make me feel guilty. But a vague sense of guilt followed me everywhere. I thought of going away. But where could I go? This was my place, my home. My name was all wrong, I concluded. Altaf Ahmad. I began to stutter if someone asked me my name, as if I’d committed a mistake. I’d come to detest this diffidence of mine.

At night an indistinct wailing and screaming came to my sleeping ears and I’d sit up with a jerk. As soon as I sat up the noise would be replaced by a thick, tightly packed silence. I thought if I cut it with a knife, slices of it would fall and pile up on the ground. It was terrifying to travel from that city of uproar to this stillness, all in my own mind. And then there was that fire spreading within me.

There was fire outside too. The month of June and no sign of rain! Searing winds laden with dust blew across the city torturing people, trampling and crushing trees, creating havoc, but rain? The skies seemed to have sworn not to let fall a single drop. Grass and trees were getting burnt to cinders. The sky turned a fiery red. I’d stand at my window every day and stare at the sky, as if just by looking at it I could make a stream of water spurt from it. No sign of rain, though. Clouds strolled across the sky in careless attitudes, as though taking a walk in their garden. Then they disappeared, seeming to have no connection with rain at all.

It was on one of these difficult days that I saw Badri standing at my door. I was very happy to see him. It was like finding oneself in front of a waterfall on a blazing summer day. Our friendship went back almost forty years. We knew each other’s dreams and nightmares. Forty years is a long time. He looked pleased to see me too. He stretched his legs out on the sofa and repeated his question – “Well, how’s the practice?”

“I’m getting by, how about you? How’s that English coaching of yours?”

“Oh you’re still stuck in the coaching!” he said. “That’s an old story now!” As if it was my fault I didn’t know what he was up to now.

“All that finished long ago. It was simply beyond me, those kids with their ABC! Oh, that’s a poem!”

Suddenly he threw back his head and guffawed at his absurd poem. I got a glimpse of his discoloured teeth and the back of his throat opened up like a cavern. He seemed to be addicted to tobacco.

“So, now?” I asked.

“What now? Does everything have to have a ‘now’ to it? I’m a free bird. I can go wherever I want.”

His carefree conversation notwithstanding, he looked tired and a little subdued. I looked at him fondly. His face had a two or three day old stubble and I remembered the days when his cheeks were smooth and he’d run a razor on them, trying to induce a beard to grow. He hadn’t shaved today, though. Seeing him after so many years, it seemed to me as if he’d been put into an ageing machine that had overnight put signs of age on his young face. His body too was past its prime.

He must have thought I’d aged too. My beard had turned quite grey. If I shaved it off I’d still look young. Farzana had been after me for months to shave off my beard. I’ll shave it off this summer, I’d thought. But now I clung desperately to my beard, as if it were the one most precious thing in the world, something I couldn’t lose at any cost. As I said before, I’d become strange.

“Is there something that brings you to Allahabad?” I asked.

“My wife’s people live here… did you forget?” he asked a little peevishly.

“Yes, of course, I know that,” I said. “So you’ve come to cool off with all that ice!” I laughed, a little embarrassed.

“Well, Vibha wanted to come, so I tagged along… I thought it might be a good chance to meet you, too… and it’s not as if I was doing anything much anyway, just sitting around.”

He stood up suddenly, as if sitting around was something he couldn’t bear to do and walked over to the window. It looked out onto the back portion of the house. The boundary was just a few feet away from the window and a corner of my neighbour’s garden was visible from there. Heat had ravaged the garden. There were two huge mango trees standing near the wall like silent demons. There wasn’t a single mango on the trees this year, just dust-laden leaves of a deep green and swarms of dragon flies hovering above them. Evening was slowly settling in. A loud chirping of cicadas rose from the deserted garden and suddenly there was the sound of a pressure cooker whistling in the neighbour’s kitchen.

Badri was lost in thought. I had no way to fathom what he was thinking. Then he gestured theatrically with his hand, motioning me to come to him. I went across and he started speaking in a whisper even though there was no one else in the room.

“I wanted to let you in on something that only Vibha and I know about!”

“What’s that?” I asked, a little startled.

“I’m going to be rich soon! I’ve hung around for so long waiting for a job – wearing myself out, boot-licking important people, but I think my fortune’s turned at last! The problem’s finished!” he declared triumphantly and he sliced the air with the edge of his hand as if hacking away some secret fear.

“Oh,” I said, somewhat amused. “What’s happened? Aren’t you going to tell me? Have you found buried treasure or something?”

Of course I’d been joking but now he turned to me, stupefied. He said slowly, “Yes, that’s just it! I found treasure buried under my house!”

I thought he was being absurd as usual, trying to pull a fast one. God knows what Get-Rich-Quick schemes he kept thinking up. He might have told me about a lottery or an inheritance but now he deftly snatched the idea I had floated in jest and got busy trying to make it sound credible.

“Well actually, this is gold that belonged to my great-grandfather”, he said with a deadpan face. “You know how old our house is. I don’t know if you noticed but there’s a small dark room right next to Amma’s pooja ghar. I found a black trunk in there, with a big lock on it. When I broke the lock, do you know what I found?”

I groaned inwardly. Oh no! Not another one of his stories! But he went on, “There was an old map of our house on yellowed paper and a spot marked in red on it that said ‘Rudraprasad’s gold’. Rudraprasad was my great-grandfather!”

His dishevelled hair waved lightly in the gust of breeze that came in through the window and his faded face lit up momentarily. The incessant song of cicadas and the purple light outside had created magic in the atmosphere. I felt unreal, as if we were characters in an odd play and any minute the curtain would go up to thunderous applause from the audience. His eyes shone as he spoke, his voice had grown excited and loud. Maybe it was the enjoyment of weaving a story that had transformed his face and made the tired lines dissolve into pleasure. He began to embroider the details with more skill as he proceeded, as though he were weaving a magic carpet on which he would fly away, far from all his problems. I wanted to fly from my problems too. Both of us had our anxieties that we faced on a daily basis.

Then he said, “I’ve found the place where the gold is buried…”

I did not allow disbelief to surface on my face. I listened to him expressionlessly, as though what he said was quite banal, not improbable under any circumstances. I realised that this was all he wanted of me; a few moments in which I kept aside my faculty of reason and simply believed in him. I was willing to give him this reassurance. If this was how he chose to appease his despair at being unemployed, who was I to judge him?

He continued with his make-believe – “Vibha and I have already started digging… we dig at night and put the bed over the hole in the day. Everyone is asleep then… if anyone came to know of this, we could be in danger…”

“How much have you dug?”

“Well, about six or seven feet so far.”

“Found anything?”

“We came upon a low, rusty door… now it’s just a question of opening it and going in.”

I looked at him without moving my gaze away. There were cracks in his self-confidence now. I glimpsed a tangled web of complexity in him. I did not remember seeing him like this earlier. He seemed eager to make me believe his story and in so doing, believe it himself. To become convinced him that all roads were not closed for him yet, that he could still make it. The thought crossed my mind that when he talked about digging the ground, was he digging into his own self, trying to find inner reserves of strength? Listening to him, I had forgotten my own troubles for the moment. I heard the thud of the spade as it hit the ground again and again. The sound brought me back from my thoughts.

“So why don’t you open the door?” I asked.

“That’s just what it is, bhai!” he said. “There’s an old snake guarding the door… it’s an ancient cobra, it’s got a moustache!”

Now this was really too much. He was going too far, I thought. But I couldn’t bring myself to point this out to him.

“It won’t be long now,” I consoled him.

Soon he got up to leave.

“I’ll keep you posted,” he said and set out into the darkening evening. I stood at the door and watched him go. It turned dark very quickly and his dirty white shirt showed up in the gloom as if it were the sail of a ship trying to find its way on a dark and rocky sea.

A few days later Badri sent me a huge slab of ice from his father-in-law’s factory. To keep me cool in the heat, he said in the note that came with it. An odd gift, I thought. But then, it was quite in character. When I went up close to the ice, I found that my name had been engraved on the slab in large clear letters. Altaf Ahmad. It was my name, written there as if it was being announced to the world at large. The same name that used to bring on my stutter. He hadn’t thought of my name as different from any other, say his own. I took a deep breath and something cool descended into my eyes.

I had to get together several people to lift off the ice from the trolley it had come in. The sun glanced off the ice in rainbow colours. It lay in my yard the whole day, melting away slowly. There was an old banyan tree outside the gate. The ice melted and flowed into the ancient roots of the banyan. The tree was very old and massive. Parrots and green pigeons hid in the leaves and pecked at its fruit. Once in a while storks and hornbills arrived as well. I thought that the tree must have so many layers of memory embedded in it. It had stood there through so much time. These difficult days would amount to just a moment in the history of that tree. I felt consoled when I thought of it like this.

(Translated from the original Hindi by the author, Sara Rai.)