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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  Excerpt | The Scatter Here Is Too Great
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Excerpt | The Scatter Here Is Too Great

Set in Karachi, this collection of linked stories ushers in a fresh new voice

Bilal Tanweer. Photo: Thomas LangdonPremium
Bilal Tanweer. Photo: Thomas Langdon

I have protruding teeth and because of this everyone at school called me parrot, parrot. One day I beat up this one boy who called me parrot, parrot even though I did not say anything to him. He had short brown hair. I caught him by his hair and then I beat him. But I did not know I said bad words to him and his father and his sister too. This happens when I am angry. One of the other boys later told me I used the sister-word to abuse that boy with brown hair, his father and his sister. He said that I said bhenchod to him. It is not a word I would say. Not to his father. But everyone says that I said this word. Everyone cannot lie.

My teacher called Baba to school. Baba did not believe that I knew the words my teacher said I used when abusing her and the boy. She said I abused her when she was trying to pull me away from the boy. I had pulled him down with his hair and climbed on his chest and slapped his face many times. In return, he scratched my face with his nails. I remember all this but not the swearing.

At first, Baba doubted the teacher, but when other people also told him that they heard me abusing, he was angry and stopped talking to me. I said sorry, sorry to him so many times but he would not say anything or even look at me. Then I became angry and started to cry. And I shouted at him as well. My sister and mother were very scared when I was shouting at Baba. My mother was eating when I was shouting; she stopped chewing her food and just kept looking at me. I saw her looking but I only knew I was angry and I was crying. I did not know what I was saying. Amma beat me with the big steel spoon for getting angry at Baba. Also because I shouted at him. She had bought this spoon from the bazaar two days back and it was dipped in the curry bowl. When Amma hit me, it was hot and I could smell the curry on my hand all night. But I was already crying so her beating did not do anything to me. There were red marks on my arms later. But I am strong. After that everyone became quiet. I was sitting alone on the sofa. My mother took my sister in a corner and told her to make me eat food because I had not eaten. They thought I did not know what they talked about in the corner. But I knew. My sister came with the food. She fed me food with her hands, and she told me that I should say sorry to Baba.

I apologized but nothing really happened. He kept quiet. He said to Amma, ‘I do not know where he learnt this language. He is so small.’

Baba had two jobs. He worked in office and he wrote little books of stories. He said he wrote them for kids like me. I told him I was not a little kid. He read me all his stories. They were in little eight-anna books and they were all about brave people who fought bad people.

The Scatter Here is Too Great: By Bilal Tanweer, Random House India, 203 pages, Rs 350
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The Scatter Here is Too Great: By Bilal Tanweer, Random House India, 203 pages, Rs 350

At school I had problems learning spellings and tables. Baba taught me about the blackboard we have in our minds, and we can use it to draw in our heads with coloured chalk. I used to close my eyes and draw on the blackboard. And whenever I wanted to remember spellings, I copied them from the blackboard. After that I did not find it difficult to remember things. I even drew things on the blackboard when I went to sleep at night.

I taught Baba to draw on the blackboard also. When he came back from the office, I took off his glasses, sat on his stomach, and then we closed our eyes. Initially, Baba drew only sceneries: one house and one sun and six hills. But then I explained to him that we had a big board, and we could draw anything, with any colour. So then we drew Pakistan’s flag. I drew small flags, I liked them. Baba said his flags were large. While drawing, I would sometimes forget what I was drawing and listen to the chalk’s sounds—tak-takka-tak-tak and sss-hisssss. But I did not tell Baba this. I knew he would not understand. I just told him to make things: fish, grass, stars (they were the easiest), a big-sized sun. I would always make three suns: one sun for the morning, one for the evening and one for the night. Whatever scenery I made, I had a sun there. I liked the sun. Sun contains light in it. I liked bulbs as well. Bulbs are suns. Small suns. But I like the big sun that no one can turn off. Sometimes, I would just tell Baba to fill his blackboard with light. We did this with yellow chalk. Then one day, just like that, Baba and I started drawing cars and big houses, with big terraces. We chose different colours for rooms and cars. And then, when we finished drawing, we would tell each other what our cars looked like, what the shape of the windows was, what all we could see outside, what colour the floors in the house were. I always told Baba about my drawing first because if he told me his I would forget mine.

After I finished my homework, Baba told me stories from storybooks he brought from his office. My favourite story was a story Baba wrote himself. It was about a brave little blue fish who was a boy like me and who lived in a pond and goes to the big river and meets other big fish and helps them. It is a story about being brave and always saying the truth. After reading the stories, Baba smoked his special tobacco, which made hot white smoke, and then with the smoke and his fingers made animals in the stories—little ducks, sparrows, eels, snakes, other fish. It sometimes made him cough a lot and Amma said it was bad for him and I should not make Baba do things that were bad for him.

I also left school because we had become poor. Baba lost his job at the office where they printed children’s storybooks. Baba wrote some of those storybooks, like the story of the blue fish. And the new job was not good. The old uncle Baba worked for was shot while walking out of a bank. Two people on a motorcycle tried to snatch his money. When he refused, they shot him. After that, uncle’s brother took over the business. But he did not like Baba because Baba always spoke the truth.

That night I heard Baba saying to Amma, ‘I don’t think they are happy with me. I had a fight today as well. No, they did not say anything. I just don’t like to fight the family I have worked for all my life. His brother and his family have been our guardians for the past eight years. But if they want to change their ways, I don’t know how I will get along.’ Amma was quiet. Everyone was sleeping. They were talking in the dark in low voices. My sister was sleeping, but I was awake. Baba and Amma talked every night like this. Baba said little and then Amma said little.

Excerpted with permission from Random House India. The book is out this month.

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Published: 02 Dec 2013, 05:37 PM IST
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