Uma - and her zealousness for Zed

It is at school that she has taken to collecting beedis, Bhutan beedis are not the tobacco itself but the silver wrappers of a cigarette brand that are a rage in this border town at the foothills of the Himalayas. She has 23!! Twenty three. She keeps counting them time and again to cross check, making sure that her math is right, what if that evil boy whose name she has no interest in, took it? Sitting next to her is a pretext to steal her treasures. She hates this mixed seating business. Girls are boring but safe. Boys are exciting but trouble. He has already eyed her beedi collection and he has refused to part with some of his in exchange of solid help in home-work. Since she has been helping him anyway with his flagging English she has rightfully bargained for 2 beedis in return of per day of Home Work help but he has turned out to be oh! so kanjoos. She does not like kanjoos boys. Uma defines men as boys who can give. As long as they know only to take they will remain outside her interest zone. So her beedi collection has now come to a naught. At an odd number. Disconcerting. She should have made at least a quarter century.

Today she is happy because she has found a baccha pankh. With this her feather collection will be at a round figure of 50. Fifty is better than twenty three. What she has found is a ‘Bachcha Pankh’, deserving inverted commas, this is a rare find, it comes attached to the mother and thus its value in the market is greater. She could easily trade it for a few Bhutan beedis. In fact she can preen about it tomorrow at school and barter at will. She has been lately investing most of her time after school meandering in meadows, eyes deep in observation and exploration while that silly boy who needs help with English works on his beedi collection. Her keen eye has been finally rewarded with this treasure. Not all of them are usually in good shape and colour so her pink feather find, mother and child, is of great importance to Uma. She cuddles it, caresses it, blows at it and finally hides it in her notebook, a different one meant solely for feathers. Finding feathers is not as simple as collecting Bhutan beedis. One has to trek the countryside where the birds fly their migratory routes, where they perch out of hunger and thirst, shedding as they wait, by way of rent, their much loved armour for children like her who are still lost in a fantasy world. The next step is to ID, identify, the feathers. This is where boys become useful. They know their birds. One boy for example had called Uma a Mynah. She was upset that he had not bothered to identify her as a Koel. They knew their birds but could not label them appropriately. Fools.

Her find had made her famous for a day at school but the value of a gulabi bachcha pankh far surpassed anything anyone had ever traded before so she was left with no takers. Everyone was coming to have a look at it, wanting to touch it (she had to be strict about the NO TOUCH policy) at odd hours making the teachers suspicious and irritable.

“What is it Zain, why are you here? Aren’t you in B section?” the science teacher not a big fan of the charming Zain took him to task for hanging around in the A section after lunch hour
“ Yes Ma’am but Uma…..” poor Zain not used to being ticked off so unceremoniously stuttered Uma’s name much to her delight, go on she thought, keep saying it, it feels so lovely.
“Uma what? Why are all the boys so interested in Uma today?” the teacher was getting annoyed at Uma now.
Horror. Deflect interest. Declare peace.
“Sorry Ma’am, I found a feather that I wanted you to identify for our science project, I wanted to show you but before that….” Uma is quick to seize the losing ground putting her teacher back in the dock.

Which teacher can claim anger at an INQUISITIVE student?

So after that fiasco with boys, feathers, beedis and teachers, Uma now spends all her free time filling her song-book. This prized possession she has designed herself. Waste paper from old notebooks has gone into this, mostly white-ruled that is used by school children of her time. This she has sewn with diligence in red thread, stem stitch and an attempt at herringbone towards the edges. The end result is sufficient to host film songs. Eventually it will house folk, classical, devotional and one day who knows foreign songs too?

If this seems like an innocent hobby for an eight year old, well no. Film culture is looked at askance by her family and those around her. Schools do not encourage it nor do elders. It remains a forbidden territory that must be chartered at one’s own risk. You cannot hope to get any information about your favourite stars or songs from any source. She is eight and it is the seventies, she is doomed unless she is resourceful. Uma has Pranati though. Her partner in crime. Pranati is her sister’s keeper. Pranati has been employed solely to give her two year old sister company when Amma and Nanna go for parties. Uma instead of resenting this usurping of her authority enjoys this respite from responsibility. Children are trying. Children should be born as adults. All this baby business is beyond her understanding. All these didis saying ‘oh so cute, look at her smiiiiiiile!’, she finds lacking in them an essential sense of self.

Her sister no doubt possesses a good smile but she also cries a lot and wants constant attention and is a shadow which she cannot shrug off. Uma dislikes being responsible for anything or anybody. Just for once she would like to be solely herself. Without tags or definitions. Or siblings. Or parents. Constantly reminding her her duties and obligations. Or is it just her family? She is sure that the Basra family downstairs is not guilt ridden with who does what and how with whom, they laugh a lot and seem pretty hmm frivolous! She cannot decide if she likes that either. In this conflict-ridden brain of hers forbidden films songs are a welcome intrusion.

Uptil now she has been exposed to only Sanskrit Shlokas, Telugu Poems and English hymns by her conscientious mother and now suddenly deliciously unbiddingly this world of romance! Her Amma cannot stop the winds of change that waft through the window of her room that reigns over National Highway # 31 C. A room with the view of the magnificent Kanchenjunga. From across the road where the rest of the Air Force Station sprawls and then the Jaldapara Wildlife Sanctuary, come in strange calls. Along with the wild calls come the songs. Some days you can hardly hear them for the constant truck traffic, other days you can sing along, some days the songs are repeated so Uma has a chance to write down the lyrics and some days there is a blackout and she is left on her terrace humming with her baby sister keeping her company, crying.

Right now there is this urgent desire to record in her newly learnt Devanagari the words for “O Saathi Ray Tayray Bina Bhee Kya Jeena” with some help from the dimwallah’s daughter Pranati. Who apart from being their maid is also the only one who understands this passion of hers. Amma has blamed her coming second in class to this ‘evil hobby’ that she has acquired over the holidays. In fact Uma has always had this desire to fill her life with song only that uptil now she has not had the means nor the inclination to put in the hard work that goes with such tastes. She will have to accept everything that comes her way, she will have to lose boundaries, she will have to be willing to fill herself with entities, rhythms, structures that have never been a part of her erstwhile world. Her parents were right in their displeasure; in their instinctive protectiveness but like all first time parents they have lost the parental battle to their first-born. The subterfuge and subversive tactics of this new generation has left her innocent parents not used to such deviousness bewildered and lost. Uma has often felt sad for her parents. That they should have been so fated to have her as their daughter. She could never be theirs fully. Uma is her own person. No one can own her. Her victory is not in winning the battle but in never fighting it. If one has to fight for something, it is not worth it. What one wants one takes. Quietly.

One fights ONLY when what is already yours is being snatched away. Which logically puts you at war with most people and this is where she is stuck. Thinking of such conundrums has been her pastime while hunting for feathers, resorting to humming songs in a new language each time she is lost in an intricate philosophical tangle.

A new language is being learnt and it is manufacturing myriad possibilities. An exciting world, which was heretofore unknown and mysterious reveals itself. Wonderful how a few alphabets have the capacity to crank open a parallel universe! She is trudging along ever so slowing with enthusiastic help from Pranati, who being Bengali does not fare much better either. For example what did "TUJBINJOGAN"…….. mean?

They would get ready every evening, as though for a beau, sitting expectantly on the terrace waiting with an open book, sharpened pencil and two chilled nimbu paani glasses for bhaiyya in the open-air-theatre across the road to start playing the songs over the loudspeaker before the evening show, these songs played again at INTERVAL and after the film screening. The two girls kept praying, hoping that the truckwallahs had made a longer routine stop at the roadside dhabbas so that the trucks’ blaring honks and grunts did not disturb their sojourn with the songs. That the Gods of Electricity and Rain were in good spirits, that nothing would come in the way of their ears and the breeze that carried the notes of a new melody.

For an encore one had to wait another day, another evening till the open-air-theatre of Air Force Station, Hashimara played this song again at around 7 pm. Assuming that the bhaiyya on duty tomorrow liked this song. It was random. You could suddenly be assailed by a song of your liking or be subjected to some harsh unheard of beats. Waiting patiently with pencil and notebook was the only answer. On top of that there was no surety that the lyrics struggling to make it across National Highway 31C would reach in sound shape and rhythm on this side of the road. For her house was on THIS side while the make shift cinema hall was on THAT side. Too many barriers for one who is just eight.

The mood of the bhaiyyas could be traced to the songs they played. You could guess who was married, who had his family here, whose family was far away, who was going home on leave, who was hoping to get engaged. Today it was “Aaj say pehlay aaj say zyaada……” Uma liked the song instantly, this was the second time she had heard it in four months and she had been waiting eagerly for it. She liked the word ‘zyaada’, she liked Z in general. This was a new sound for her and it excited her. It made her feel like an adult. Though the combined brains of Uma and Pranati could not decipher what “…meethi…. ghaDi” meant. Sweet Watch? That did not make any sense. It was against her core principle to seek help from the outside. She would listen to it a million times if necessary; she was sure to understand it, eventually.

‘Zyaada’ was her third Z word.
Her first Z word was ‘Zindagi’.

She remembered it clearly. “Ek raasta hai zindagi jo tham gaye tho kuch nahin”. Along with a song-book she would have to start a word-book. There were so many new words constantly streaming through her open window that she was being inundated with unknowns. Tham, what was tham? Pranati suggested that it might mean ‘stop’ because in Bangla ‘thaam’ was stop. Uma decided to take this into consideration; maybe her maid had a point? Pranati might not be educated but she was wise. So life is journey which is nothing when it is stopped? Is this what the man was trying to say?

Another day and a broken hearted bhaiyya crooned his love story through the song “Ek haseena thee ek dewaana tha, kya umar thee, kya samaa tha, kya zamaana tha”. She liked her collection of Z words. She should start another notebook for this.

Zamaana was her second Z word.
Zindagi. Zamaana. Zyaada.

Uma would never know which actor was singing a particular song to which actress because Uma was not allowed to watch films. She could indulge all she wanted in her song-book but when it ultimately came to the actual visuals she would never know how they were picturized. With years she took a supercilious view, after all her Thaathayya had warned her that the real film was being lived by her everyday, what was the need to watch a manufactured story anyway. The truth though was that her mother did not think that films were educative enough for her daughter. If something did not educate then Amma took a dim view of it.

The films shown here are from another era. Since the station cannot afford new prints and has the added duty of keeping its displaced fauj happy, it resorts to a Jai Santoshi Ma or a Chambal Kay Daku for such purposes of entertainment every evening. Sometimes a reel is missing or it fails to arrive from Siliguri. Yet another time it might get stuck in the projector or the lights fail or the sound system does not work. Some days it rains. Never mind since all the ladies come prepared with umbrellas. Amma among them. This is their respite, their break from monotony on NH 31C, their means of connecting to civilization.

Uma is not allowed to watch films.
Whether it rains or not, she is expected to go to school, come home, go to play, come home, go to sleep. This limited aspect of life is threatening to bore her already. Is this all there is she thinks many a time. She is trying to make her life interesting by collecting. Songs, Stories, Feathers, Beedis. At least this way she will not be ‘thaam-ming’ her life, it will be in perpetual motion, one collection to next. She makes a list of all her collections. She has a comic book collection, a song collection, a beedi collection, a feather collection, a stamp collection (with special 3D Bhutan stamps, of which some envious boy in school has said that it is not a real stamp, stupid fellow) and hopefully soon a Z word collection. This last collection she is sure no one has. It satisfies her immensely. Finally something different, something unique, something that separates her from the rest.

It’s a struggle, Uma knows, between her urgent desire to be separate and her essential nature to unite.

Her monotonous life is made a little colourful in that she has been selected to play Abul Fazl in Akbar’s Nine Gems at school. She is the only girl in the make-believe Mughal court because her teacher has insisted that the class elect by secret ballot appropriate candidates to play these roles. Obviously her habit of jotting everything into notebooks has been taken literally as a sign of great literary prowess. She wishes they had made her Akbar though! How she longs to rule over her land – fairly and justly, like Akbar of course. That she has been at all elected in a class full of boys is a miracle in itself, considering how cliquey boys are. She should not be complaining at all even though she knows that she is far better than that he-is-so-forgettable boy who is to be Akbar. She will have to don a moustache and a turban and behave like a Gem, a Navaratan. Though what precious stones have to do with courtiers is a little confusing. Amma says that they are precious because of their unsurpassed talent, wit and wisdom. She is not told what Abul Fazl’s contribution is nor which precious stone he resembles nothing except that he wrote Akbar's biography.In fact they all have to be as still as stones since the play has no dialogues for the Gems. Only Akbar gets to speak with Birbal while the precious stones gleam brightly in the court as a lovely backdrop.

Coming to think, why hadn’t they elected her as Birbal either? She had thought she was funny enough though more often than not no one has laughed at her jokes like they have laughed at that-fellow-who-plays-Birbal's jokes. Anyway her class boys are really juvenile, laughing at fart and potty jokes, no wonder her humour is beyond them. Better to be a stone cold Abul Fazl than a gassy Birbal.

She is thankful for one thing though. Her name has a lovely ring to it. FaZl. Fazzzzl. Fazal. F and Z were unique letters. These sounds never enter her mouth when she speaks at home. Her tongue likes the feel of them. She feels like she is caressing aliens. Uma would have liked her name to possess a Z in it. It need not start with it, she is not so particular, buried somewhere she wishes for Z to lend a sophistication she associates with the letter. Her own name is devoid of frills and does not provoke any flights of fancy that a Z does.

Her first conscious encounter with such a name is Zain and he has two. Zeds. Zain shiraZi. She is starting to see what adults meant by life being unfair. Here is a boy with a name that has not one but two Zs. What else can she do but fall in love with him? After a year of much unrequited sighing, eyeing, note writing and following him around school she finds him one day at lunch time caught in a fistfight with a torn shirt looking at her for approval, looking very un-Zee like. It is hard to explain what a Zee-like look or behaviour is. It could be this: fights are good but the cause must be just. To fight to show off to a girl whom you have never acknowledged thus far is tomfoolery. Thus remained two loves from that one-year encounter of an eight year old. One for Z and another for Shiraz. Zain meanwhile was given the cold shoulder which led him to forever swear off girls and look elsewhere for solace. The letter Z was easy to own but the city would take time to conquer. Where was it? S.H.I.R.A.Z.zzzzzzz.

Amma’s agitated response was ‘we don’t keep such names’ when Uma protested that her name lacked a certain something. Her mother reeled off all the trouble she had taken to select an appropriate name in a joint family in the face of in-law opposition, making sure that her daughter’s name was modern and easily pronounceable. Four names that went into giving Uma her character. Why was she being difficult?

“Can I change my name?” had caused her Nanna to get palpitations.
“Oh! they warned me this child is going to be difficult. Who will marry her….”
Who would have thought that a single alphabet could cause so much rancour. That embracing it was akin to beheading her own mother as her Nanna dramatically put it. That is when she realized that there were OUR names and THEIR names. You cannot reject your name without rejecting yourself. Your vamsamu, your ancestry. Basically you are doomed for life.

“You could marry a Muslim,” suggested her girlfriends whose thoughts were full of men and marriage even at this tender age.
“He will need surname with Z in it, no?”
giggle giggle “wait a few years and marry Zain”, more giggles
“how about a pen name?”

Ah! This sounds like the best solution. This did not involve matricide. It did not involve marriage with an M for a Z. It was inclusive and might meet with parental approval. Uma’s only fear is that she has never penned a poem until now (if you do not count ORANGES, which she had written in what she presumed was a fit of poetic beatitude but in fact was nothing more than insatiable hunger, at six). Also she is not sure if composing in English would make her eligible for a Zee-like pen name. Who can enlighten her? Maybe she should first write a poem and then figure out? What should she write about?

“You should watch more Hindi movies” her marriage-obsessed friends are also film crazy and cannot understand her distaste and criticism of all the movies they so love.
“What! You have not seen Naseeb yet?”
“She would have if it was called NaZzzeeb!” oh! the mockery they make of sensitive souls!!
“Zaan Zany Zanardan….” They sing whenever she is around.

Uma’s notebooks follow her in her own trunk from one station to another along with the forty two boxes of stuff that her family has managed to accumulate over the years. Among all her prized possessions her song-book remains her favourite closely followed by her Z book. The rest have been forgotten as child’s play or have been given away in a fit of generosity.Uma's notebooks trail her from Bengtal to Assam.

"You are going to Azzaaaaam!" her friends tease at the railway station.

It has been raining relentlessly for a few days now. That is how it is in these parts. It gets dark as early as three in the afternoon and at nights in lieu of electricity there are fireflies. Everyone congregates in the open on charpoys to sing and exchange stories. Sometimes they put music and dance under the stars. The battery run tape recorder gives up after the seventieth rendering of Disco Deewane Hain and all the uncles are bored at having a nine year old like Uma for a partner. They would have preferred Judy and her bouncing breasts but Judy’s father has just been murdered. It would be too unbecoming even for men such as these to look at her, you know where, when she is mourning. Everyone is hoping that the wild elephants don’t ruin their dancing in the dark. As for vipers and other serpentine creatures that slithered about in summer, this is monsoon, now its time for the leeches. Salt is within reach but it won’t be necessary after sunset. The night is heaving under the ardour filled weight of the damp purple sky, in rhythm to the cicadas’ brazen chorus. This is the wild wild East.

This is also the time for Lucy, Bolaka and Uma to practice Aap Jaisa Koi Meri Zindagi Mein Aaye for a Variety Programme. These events are the cultural equivalent of the TV nights in more developed nations. They help to keep the disjointed homesick men and families entertained and war-ready. Uma is sure that if she ever overcomes her distaste for wailing kids and has one herself that kid will not be found swaying to such obscene lyrics. Not even for her beloved country. Not that she understands much and she has not been allowed to watch Qurbani but her female radar has caught on. The idea of gyrating thus with no fear of censure since she is only nine calendar-wise compels her to dance but she would rather dance to another tune. The song though on the other hand has been responsible for quite a lot of disquiet in the hearts of young men. No one here understands the double entrendes. They assume in all probability that the ‘Baat Ban Jaye’ refrain refers to a good conversation!

Anything to enjoy Biddu’s beats. As it is everyone speaks and behaves as though they all belong ‘back home’ in England.So Uma gets to wear a blue halter neck that her Amma has stitched and gets to swing to Nazia Hassan’s voice but in bobbed hair. She would have preferred dungarees instead and two plaits, a la the crooner’s look, as seen in the only poster available in India of the fifteen year old sensation from Pakistan but Amma does not know how to stitch dungarees - she does not even know that they are called that - and Uma’s hair refuses to grow into plaits. She has been praying every day for hair long enough to reach her not yet existent hips, the epitome of a Telugu beauty as per Nanna but the Gods are busy killing people. Good people like Walia uncle. Judy's father. Also she hates to wear halter necks and backless tops and short skirts and other such trendy raiments her mother insists she dorn. “Wear them when you can, you can’t wear them when you are my age!” Amma says often with a pained voice.

Uma does not think that she will grow up to miss such clothes, she takes no issue with the sari. In fact if Judy were wearing a sari all these uncles would stop looking at her. At least they wouldn’t ogle at her so outrightly, outrageously. Men she has noticed are guilt ridden when breaking social barriers that they have erected to keep checks on their women hence traditions are a woman’s best façade.

The world is so nuanced that she can see its variegated patterns strangling the nervous system of individuals caught in its web struggling to grasp its centre. For poets on the other hand, it is perfect subject matter. For poetry there are certain languages, which ease this understanding, which evoke specific feelings. For such feelings there are certain alphabets. Stringing them together to elicit a name, a form, an emotion, a rasa, a ruchi. What’s in a name? Everything!! The sound, the meaning, the latent volcano of emotion that accumulates with each calling, that bursts at moonrise into a star spangled sky. Each word a potent mantra ready to strike its target.

Uma thus has been linked karmically to Zed. If it was a ksha or a shTra her native ethnicity would have sufficed but this hunger is for an alphabet that hides within its folds an alien people, a foreign religion and a little understood pysche. For India is a secular democracy where one must never mention in decent company the name of any religion, caste or tribe. Growing up in such environs where the obvious differences are ironed out even before recognizing them, Uma pines for the unknown. Thank God for her this is a year of the Zee. feroZe, Zeenat, naZia…..

Therefore and that’s why and of course she would like to meet the singer’s brother: Zoheb. He is her latest heartthrob. She has not confided in anyone because all her playmates are boys and she instinctively realizes that they might not take too kindly to her fascination. One, he is Pakistani. Two, he is a Singer. Three, you cannot actually say it can you, the religion. They will make mincemeat of him if she were to even mention his name. It is alright for the boys to like Nazia but not okay for Uma to like Zoheb!! Funny. Nevertheless, all of summer she has been memorizing Tayray Kadmon Ko Choomoonga and humming it at every given opportunity. To acquire the lyrics has been a major undertaking. Amma says sorry, this LP is not going to be her Christmas gift to Uma. No, something educational is what she will be getting. Nanna, who otherwise always contradicts Amma, agrees with her only in this matter, that Amma knows BEST on how to “discipline the daughters”. When they can let her dance to a song which huskily announces to Zeenat's gyrations(as told by lusty male classmates) dil-ko-dil-badan-ko-badan, she does not understand the reason behind their refusal to gift this particular LP but parents are strange creatures. She will have to look elsewhere.

When Nanna descended from the helicopter dressed as Santa Claus and pleased all the camp kids (except his own daughter) with gifts of their choice Amma to make up for not gifting her the music of Disco Deewane (the name conveying to her parents the hint of corrupted youth) said she would take her to watch ROCKY. A MOVIE. Finally. They were conferring on her a prize, a reward for her years of abdication, abstinence! Also, going to Devdoot in Silchar from their camp in Kumbhigram was an expedition. Uma loves expeditions. It is two hours away and will need three kinds of transportations. A jeep, a three tonner and finally a rickshaw. Since we know now that the films that were played at the open-air-theatres in these bases were mostly out of an archaelogical dump. Going to the City for a Movie! The idea of the journey pleased Uma more than the fact that she was going to watch a movie.Infact she did NOT want to watch a movie. This movie. Any movie.

Wouldn’t she like to see Nargis’s son? Who is Nargis ? Amma forgets that she is only nine. Nanna forgets that she even exists. It’s a hilarious household. She is Sunil Dutt’s wife … and who is he now? Amma! Can you please start at the very beginning? Uma has a natural distaste for all forms of popular culture. It is genetic. It is also the reason for the downfall of her tribe. If it is of the masses, it must be sub-standard. Unless something is esoteric, hard earned, hardly understood it cannot be worth seeking, worth appreciating. Thus Uma has been protected from Bollywood until now. She is not allowed to watch any movies. Slowly she has stopped wanting to watch movies. Frankly she has to be coaxed, goaded, threatened to watch movies.

Amma is upset with her own father for feeding some theological nonsense to her overly excitable child. Now this kid will declare she will not watch any films and that is exactly what has happened. Though films are definitely not good for children and Amma has herself prevented her daughters from getting ‘spoilt’ this illogical fear of films on Uma's part has troubled her no end. How could her own daughter be so scared? Unless one is morally wrong one should never be afraid was her policy.

Ever since then Uma’s mother’s sole purpose in life has been to get Uma educated on the simple pleasures of life, such as Tina Munim’s parted legs (while doing yoga) and Sunjay Dutt drugged eyes framed between them. Parents can do such harm to children if the child is a little lax. Really if it were not for Uma herself, Uma would have gone astray way back. Uma thus was adult enough to sensibly close her eyes in that particular scene. Her parents definitely ought to be gifted with a book on child rearing next Christmas.

-Uma also has highly sensitized antennae for anything remotely sexist. She is born a feminist, the term being introduced to her much later, much to her amusement. Who needs an –ism! What one needs is just one grey cell accompanied by the sword of conviction-

Meanwhile Devdoot is playing LOVE STORY, would Uma like to watch Rajendra Kumar’s son? Don’t these sons have names? And who would have thought that acting was hereditary! So they go to watch it a few weeks later and her father who has not budged from Geeta Dutt for years has found the songs melodious. Melodious? This kind of music puts Uma to sleep. She has found the movie offensive. The audience liked it because the heroine was being such a cry baby, calling on to the hero for every little thing. The men got to view her black bra on a fair back while the hero seemingly pulls a thorn out of her delicate flesh. This whole scene is in excruciating slow motion, keeping men wondering as to how much of Vijeta Pandit’s flesh they are entitled to for 12 Rupees. All criteria having been met, this movie is a hit.

She can’t stand the songs. And now her parents have gone and bought her ‘Love Story’, her very own LP, for her collection!! It is 78 rpm and she is gazing longingly at the black vinyl record. How I wish it was Zoheb instead of Kumar Gaurav on the cover! Each time she sees the latter she gets the jitters. In fact 'Rocky' would have been a better choice with a tender- Kya Yahee Pyar Hai? Not that she found droopy eyed s/o Sunil Dutt any better than the chikna faced s/o Rajendra Kumar but the song is an ode to love. Stylish like its heroine Tina (Thank God she is not anyone’s daughter and possesses her own name), who has brought plastic hair clips with middle parting into fashion with this song. Unlike Yaad Aa Rahee Hai, practically a wail, a high pitched lament with no respite and what has its heroine Ms Pandit brought into fashion? Black bras. Since Uma can wear the former and has no use for the latter (hopefully never will) her loyalties currently reside with Rocky.

She is meanwhile as usual making a list of all the Z letter words, infact sentences now, to repeat and learn by rote:

1. ZINDAGI bin tumharay adhoori.
2. Marnaywaala koi ZINDAGI chaahata ho jaisay
3. ZARA poocho tho mayra iraada
4. Mayray dil ka hai kaun shahZaada
5. Aaa daykhain ZARA kismay kitna hai dum

Uma does not have a pen name yet. She did try a few times to write poems worthy of possessing a pen name but they sounded too contrived even to her ears. A poem she felt needed to convey mystery and clarity at the same time. Until such a time when she could compose something simultaneously as fragile as it was deep she would abstain from taking on a pen name. Thus her zealousness for Zed would have to stoke its fires elsewhere.

Since no one in the camp has the album ‘Disco Deewane’, she has had to beg a shopkeeper in Shillong, when they go a-visiting, to play her favourite song for her, who plays it two times so she can write the words down. "Taray Kadmon Ko Choomoonga" ....He has agreed only because Amma has bought a few dead butterflies from him. Each time she sees the beautiful Morphos spread-eagled and nailed behind ornately framed glass cases in her drawing room, looking forlorn on the rain stained walls she feels guilty, she feels responsible for their untimely deaths. They died so she could sing, a song of which she understands not a word. Now that she has memorized the song and also taught it to her sister who cannot speak any language intelligibly yet, she wants to know what the words mean but it is impossible. The accent, the alien feelings and absolute lack of interest in any other language but Bengali in these parts makes it an arduous process for her.

It is something about the letter Z. It was Zain a few years ago and now it is Zoheb. This letter is the quintessential foreign element in her regular life. It creates havoc in her young mind, the otherness attracts as much as it disturbs. Uma does not know it but she owes her natural inclination towards communal harmony to a single alphabet. Being attracted to a language, one is bound to be attracted to the people who speak it. So she mulls over the lyrics, one by one, getting the intonation and the feel right. Everywhere she goes these songs play, disco has taken over her land. All the uncles have Nazia’s poster stuck on their walls, their Morpho butterfly. Also because they cannot stick Judy’s posters. Aah! now if only she knew what it meant. This song. Zaraaaa yeh geet gaanay day…………………….


Her song-book has some blank pages yet and one day she will fill it, while her Z book threatens to put her on a collision course with an alien. Maybe it will all happen together. Zee-end.