Hill-station-upon-sea

"All aboard?" Poop poop! "We're off, hold on tight!"

Well what the fat-controller actually said was "Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Raheem" but with such jovial spirit that he might well have said the above, as he revved up his bus, giving extra gas for the hill.

For me the summer holiday began with the bus trip up the hill to the foothills. It was the bus man's holiday too, he took such joy in his work. 'No one will thirst on my bus,' he declared, brandishing two bottles of water. Nor did we. Thereafter he greeted every toll collector and every vendor at traffic lights with arms outstretched, lowered from the window, blessing them, asking obliquely after the health of those at home, inviting them to join him for a cup of tea when he next passed by. (Pity the passengers on that trip) He tooted his horn and waved to all the school boys we passed, who beamed back at the spherical face of Driver Uncle, bobbing above the steering wheel.
Eventually, high above the plains he pulled up outside an old cinema. He took up his position at the door and mine host personally conveyed his very best wishes for our holidays, calling all alike 'beta', except me, whom he called 'son', proud that he could distinguish between Urdu and English speakers, even if subtle gender distinctions elude him.

It is while walking from there up the hill to the hostel I am booked into that I have a horrible thought. While I napped on the bus, did uncle take a sneaky left to bring us all to the English seaside? For while the sea that laps at the banks of the promenade is monsoon mist and the fish'n'chip shops do samosas instead, the stag-do style, kiss-me-quick kitch and roaring trade in sweetmeats is Blackpool is Scarborough is Brighton.
You take a family, any family, and put it in a street lined with livid snacks and lurid hats, add donkeys beats and lights, and it changes. Men for whom romance is roti from their wives in a tiffin-box leer. Boys who study accountancy hard so as to provide for their parents in old-age get a pogo-stick in their pants and walk funny. Girls with good grades who wish for world peace let down their hair and loosen their tongues. Their mothers, short of breath as they walk, giggle and squander household budgets on toffees and topis.
What sea air does there, the cool mist does here: it makes you want to cruise, to whizz round really really fast on a ferris wheel and eat fried things. My holiday here has a soundtrack. I sit and study and hints of dizzy beats or lusty love songs build to a crescendo, steal my heart for a second then fade out round the corner, leaving me feeling suddenly stranded. The fog and the forest it seems, is conspiring to keep me from this party.

For here, where I am staying is more convent than Comfort Inn. At the end of the lawn (keep off the tennis court) rises a building (To the Glory of God, 1920) built to house white-faced deaconesses. And it's as if they've never left. The napkins are still numbered and placed in embroidered pockets on side plates. Above one of the mantelpieces is one of their tea-towel maps of Scotland and above the other is a watercolour of a Fenland parish church. While I'm meant to be here studying Urdu, it's the coats of arms of Ayr and Dunoon I can't help memorising over mash and peas. Oh, and simply none of the features we have come to expect from A Passage to India is missing. Each room is one with a view. There are porticoes and verandas, gables and balconies, a godown (but don't ask me which one's which) kitchen quarters and ceilings lost in shadows. Employees whose forefathers served before them testify to the Raj tradition of swearing a covenant with their servants of steadfast patronage for steadfast service from one generation to the next, even unto the end. These boys were born with a knowledge of butter knives and marmalade spoons and they look at me sternly if I muddle them up. One simply cannot get the memsahibs these days. 'Mango pickle. She asked for mango pickle!' What would the good deaconesses have thought?

After a day of study and a constitutional round the hill it's time for cocoa. I'm reading my bedtime book in a pool of lamplight in the lounge. I'd like you to imagine it's gas light for atmosphere. The rest is cozily dim. The silence is disturbed by the watchman coming in from the cold. I suspect this ancient servitor may have himself stood to attention to the last of the Sahibs who ruled India. But now as he dodders in to fill his tin mug with tea, he seems to bring with him a song, a sort of lovers' lullaby, I realise as I listen. Faint violins bow out a harmony of heart-ache and the voices pipe their yearning quietly round the room. 'Ji?' I ask, 'where is the music coming from?' He finishes stirring in sugar before he lays down his spoon. Then he gestures reverently to his heart.
'Hmmm,' I say, having no other words to show appreciation for his deep understanding of the true source of music. He mistakes my monosyllable for a matronly note of disapproval and fishes under layers of shawl for the off button on his shirt-pocket radio.
It is silent again.

I tiptoe upstairs and lift the latch on the laundry door trying not to wake the women in their wooden-walled cells with the clatter of zinc jugs and tin tubs. I brush my teeth on the balcony, staring into the dark of the forest below. The quiet pays off, for from the funfair in the distance wafts another song, this time, to the moon, asking that if it should grant the singer any favour, it would be to see her again, Subhan Allah, Subhan Allah, Subhan Allah! This last vocative, originally intended as thanksgiving for some particularly fair filmi maiden, it seems to work well as thanksgiving for all this forested loveliness too.
The burden is taken up again several hours later, at dawn.
Allah hu akbar. Allah hu akbar. Allah hu akbar.
It too clicks off abruptly, before the azan is over and after that, as the first light of dawn creeps through the branches across the the range of hills, birds tune up and a thousand flute-like voices echo this truth over and over.

Out of the Eater

My flight back to the mountains didn't quite make it. The pilot tilted a wing and swung round back to Islamabad. He took one look at the clouds and wanted to go home. He announced their height in numbers meaningless in their magnitude but when I saw, I sympathised. Up there the the line between mountains and meteorology is blurred where solids are etherial, and out of the ether, walls block the way. The other suspension that makes flight possible is that of disbelief. I am willing, it'll get me home.

So I am holed up in a hotel with a carpet on the wall and a doorway in the shower. I could do with company and although there's a talkative type, from the part-of-the-furniture school of service, I'm wanting to hear more than his litany of 'hello-please-thank-you-ma'am-welcome-please', repeated often, with pride, in person and telephonically. He hopes I'll tip as Dickens was paid, by the word, but I'm no philanthropist and I leave him empty handed and strangely lost for words. Not me: 'Thank-you, Uriah, good-bye, good night, allah hafiz and inshallah never again.'

The plane makes it on day two. I arrive to sand dunes glistening in the light on the one hand and flora and fauna being fruitful and multiplying, each according to its kind, on the other. But once I've swept and bleached, the house is inhabitable again and I'm able to venture outside and enjoy the last of the lilies, just blossoming when I left, and the first of the figs. I eat them standing on the chair I pick them on, as the race to get them before the birds gives the operation a sense of urgency. I step into the school and a schoolful of children turns its collective head and hurtles towards me. Balls are left to bounce to a standstill, 'it' gives up the chase, climbers descend from apricot trees; buckets and spades, once so highly sought are abandoned; a hundred hands are outstretched. I must shake them all. A hundred good mornings later and I am hoarse. I am happy, home at last.

WALCOME BACK MISS!!! it says on the blackboard, making me glad I am their maths, not spelling, teacher. I've been led back to the year 5 classroom in my break, after fervent whispering through division. This class, who I harangue and detain, are throwing me a party. On a grubby desk 15 tiny lunch boxes are offered as oblations. I have a chip, a crisp, a bite of sandwich, of samosa, of kebab. I take namkeen and tear a bit off a fried egg. There's a biscuit and some cake. My cup runneth over.
Men are hunting and girls are gathering. By neighbours I'm given apricots and their kernels, mangoes, plums and roses. One lodges a lump of venison in my fridge, as he has none, and invites me to enjoy some. I've had lentils for lunch and tea so one hungry night I hack a piece off, pound ginger, fry it up and cure my anaemia.
The crown prince of a nearby valley is coming to dine with some dear friends. In his honour, rare 'blue sheep' is served - no woolly pastoral breed here but a hardy beast of the mountains. It's so dark it looks like it's burnt to a cinder but it is as much like blueberries as it's possible for meat to be, yes sir, yes sir, three bags full.
I am warmly welcomed back into the ecosystem: out of the eater, something to eat. My knees are nibbled, my ankles are attacked and my scalp is someone succour. I am being poured out. They make their home on my head, but there's no WALCOME here, just NIDAX! (something from the chemist.) I scour and scrub, beat bedding and sun it, burn smoke offensive to the six-legged and comb with aggression. We all groan together, as was promised for the time being.

But I've decided not going to fight this battle alone. I enlist help. I'll take care of the home front - kitchen and carpets, floors and furnishings - but the battle of the bedding and endless fabric that makes up our clothing someone else has to handle.
The first dhobi I approach doesn't do women's clothes, so to speak. I don't blame him, neither do I as of now. But I finally find my comrade standing at the window wielding his iron, so big it might explain the the occasional power outages we have as a city. His shop is more library than laundry, men's drab kameezes neatly referenced according to the dewy decimal system of washermen. You check them out to wear and return them for a wash. I know my clothes will be safe with him, but the bugs won't stand a chance. A powerful smell of clean billows from behind the back curtain. 'Will you help me...?' I begin.
A week later and trousers I'd begun to hope were meant to be crinkled are knife-edged. Kameezes stand to attention, dupattas unfold into a neat square pattern that makes teaching 3-D shapes a pleasure.

Battle-weary, I get the news. My phone rings just as a school parent stops his car and winds down his window to inform me, and tell me to go home. 'Pakistan has won'.
'What?' I should have known. The World Cup. Cricket.
I do a u-turn and join the throng of children who've also been dismissed as a national holiday is declared. I just check, for the record, that they know why, after a school girl in a neighbouring country thought she was off on Good Friday because it was someone's (not too sure whose) birthday, 'kisi ka happy burday hoga' as she put it, bored of the births of so many great men and gods. Although some know, many others simply pump the air and cry 'Happy Birthday!' in celebration of such a display of, this time sportsmanlike, strength.
And out of the strong, something sweet: Happy Rest Day.