By Palvashay Sethi
Artwork by Seyhr Qayum
Note: For best results, read on a desktop.
You know her. Have heard of her through cautionary tales with the caution being
dispensed dubious at best and unnecessary at worst. She visited you during
childhood. She seeks the pleasures of night, and on occasion the pleasures of the
day. She appears in different garbs: white cotton saris stained with blood; in kiran-
lined dupattas and nauratans that prove futile in fortressing young brides; and
sometimes in fitted black t-shirts, blue jeans, and a violent shade of red lipstick.
Tales proliferate about her like webs weaved by wires that electrify the city. They
form grids and circuits of meaning that are ubiquitous because of their presence in
every street and every neighborhood and every boulevard. The thicket of cables
that form her corpus is knotty, dense, and electric and while you think of her as a
trope she illuminates. The trope—from the Greek trépein, which means to turn,
turns an image into language. And the feet of a churel turn backward and allow her
to chase the feckless and hapless while she watches ahead: her vision steadfast.
Men who cast their eyes upon the imprint of her feet bolt in the opposite direction
only to be accosted by her unwavering gaze. Churels die with unfulfilled desires—a
miscarriage, a life without joy, an incomplete journey—but are resurrected with
their desires intact, vengeful,
and unceasing.
I know my grandmother through photographs and my family’s unremitting silence. The
scant words and phrases that form her biography consist of “quiet”, “devoted mother
and wife”, “tuberculosis” or the more archaic, “consumption.” She died after The Divide;
suspended in time as youthful, consumed by a disease that consumed a century, and
marked by a sense of the unspoken. In most photographs, she appears demure but
curious: gaze directed at the camera, posture ramrod straight, and on days I was lucky I
thought I caught the imperceptible rustle of her colorless ghararas. There was one
photograph: the only photograph that colored Barri Ammi’s unyielding silhouette. My
Phupo kept various boxes and suitcases in her possession, which were meticulously
organized by decade. Barri Ammi, however, was a category unto herself. The photograph
was at Phupo’s house in a pock-marked attaché containing photographs and letters
written and received by Barri Ammi. The attaché was brought out with great ceremony,
dusted carefully, and washed clean with an aging muslin cloth. We’d go through
photographs—all 27 committed to memory—and the narration that accompanied them.
The good thing about Phupo was that she was a masterful, if thoroughly unreliable, storyteller,
and the changing iterations or motivations behind each photograph made up for the
repetition of the exercise. The picture of my father—all six feet and four inches of him—
standing sideways and wearing a three-piece suit as he stared at the sea with Paradise
Point in the background—a rocky structure eroded by the salt of years—prompted many
stories. It was his first time wearing a suit and he was embarrassed; my Phupo and him
fought because he refused to look at the camera; he orchestrated the photograph and
wanted to look thoughtful but ultimately the subject was caught unaware with sand in his
pants, and, Phupo would surreptitiously add, in his drawers!
But the photograph of Bari Ammi always prompted the same story. A photo of 7
children—5 girls and 2 boys—standing in front of a shrubbery that disappeared
into the clouds because of overexposure. Characteristic of photos from that
time, one can never ascertain if the flat expressions were prompted by duty,
petulance, the solemnity of the occasion, or a combination of all three. Barri
Ammi, however, flashes like a bolt of lightning. Her posture at odds with the
rest as she leans forward, hands on her waist, grinning with the cheeky
exuberance of an errant child. The story goes the children were given stern
instructions to stand side by side, hands clasped, expression solemn, and
smiling was simply out of the question, because the photograph was to be
framed. The photograph was never framed—Barri Ammi was slapped, schooled
on the evil of unasked laughter, and banished to her room. The photo traveled
from drawers and attics, disappearing entirely for 25 years, before resurfacing
in the attaché. Everyone questioned about its reappearance feigned ignorance
and we accepted this with uneasy equanimity. The photo still makes me uneasy.
Where did it disappear and why did it come back? In pictures where she’s
older, Barri Ammi seems orderly: hair
parted in the middle, slick over her I was wandering the streets a week after the murder
skull with the aid of oil, always of a B grade actress called Malka. Malka had been involved in
dangling neatly by her side in a thick a protracted divorce case with her husband who shot her
braid extending beyond her waist. In outside the courtroom and then shot himself. Rumor
the photograph in front of the had it that his viscera splattered onlookers who sought the
shrubbery, Barri Ammi’s hair is wavy, counsel of holy men to preemptively rid themselves from
barely contained by a rubber band, the peril(s) of his malignant spirit. In the days that followed,
thick locks framing her laughing face. all manner of women took to the streets in protest and
She’s consumed with joy. they marched and cried Malka’s name and
danced and laughed and yelled, and yelled,
and yelled, till their chants formed a luminous vortex of words and fury across
the city. But as the chants of freedom began to subside, some manner of people
—mostly men—took exception and moved their ire to the streets and burned
effigies of Malka, hurled abuse at women, and tore apart old movie posters of
Malka; defacing her face with markers and leaving crude slogans. They replaced
her trademark crown with horns of the devil. The streets were restless as women
walked faster while clutching their bags and the proportions of men became
monstrous with menace. I was thinking about this in the state of delirium and
vigilance that characterizes walking in Karachi. A hurtling motorbike would pull
me out of my lull as the ambient noise of traffic faded in and out of unrelenting
din in my head. Walking the city is a comfort and I was animated by three
decades of clock-work exhaustion caused by chasing stories that’ve been whittled
down to gestures in bleak light. I wondered about Malka’s last moments and if
she’d seen her gun-wielding husband or if she died without noticing him,
oblivious, and momentarily buoyed by prospect of justice. I stumbled on
pavements propelled by an intangible but powerful chain of grief—like a deep,
broken sob that’s heard but not seen through closed doors. And that’s when I
saw her in front of the electricity pole, laughing silently, her laughter forming an
aura that turned the loops of wires hanging above a bright shade of blue. She
was familiar and unfamiliar; known and unknown, ultimately uncanny.
She wears a plain cotton gharara, unlike formal ones for special occasions, and
her hair while braided has strands astray. She looks out of place and stares
straight at me while twirling her braid in circles that cause the breeze to rise. The
faster she twirls her braid, which goes round and round like a fan, garbage from
the street begins to dance in the air. All this time, she doesn’t break eye-contact
and continues laughing, as the wires cast a blue light over her body, and
everything seems imbued with uncanny motion. The wind lifts her gharara and I
see her feet: she’s wearing khussas that are backwards. She finally stops laughing
and the street descends into silence. People stop in their tracks, disoriented, with
garbage on their heads, unable to parse what happened. She
puts her hand forward, as if asking me The Divide was a great equalizer in that it
to hold it, and says: produced equal amounts of division and unity. The
آؤ میرے ساتھ چلو Division of India into two countries caused negation and creation,
doppelgangers, dualities, nationalisms, one singular enmity
and a profound sense of estrangement—and all that without
touching upon three wars, multiple skirmishes, and the incalculable loss of
life that marked The Divide and everything that succeeded it. Depending
on whom I’d speak to, it’d prompt histrionics or silence. From the little
I was able to siphon from various family members, it seemed like one hell of
a trip. Those who spoke, spoke less in sentences and more in fragments,
images, lone words, and the occasional expletive from someone’s irate
Dadi. The words that formed my corpus of The Divide were قربانی
بٹوارہ، بربادی، نُقصان، خاندان، اُجڑا شہر، غم، دھرتی، لاشيں
نقل مکانی، خوشی، غدار، تعصب،لَٹ،خوف، نسنا ، قوم، ہجرت، رولا
کلام کالا ، ریل گاڑی، ریل گاڑی، ریل گاڑی The train as a trope has been
exhausted in literature about The Divide. The train is not just a physical
object animated by locomotion but a signifier for colonial modernity
that culminated in a graveyard. The train becomes a lament, an elegy, a
technology propelled by discipline, utility, and sabotage. The image of the
train is one that’s exhaustive and has been exhausted. The Literature of
exhaustion: the “L” uppercase to denote the verticality of prestige, the “e”
lowercase to demonstrate how little is left over. Exhaustion doesn’t merit
pomp and circumstance because exhaustion is the image worn threadbare.
Yet the train recurs with ruthless spite and tenacity, it persists and exists,
replicating itself because the violence of the journey cannot be undone.
What is it? Movement, animation, progress, but progression for whom and
one that leads to what?! Isn’t the train ride during and after The Divide just
an unending journey, adventure, tragedy, death in motion, incomplete, an
archive? The destination flimsy; the journey a gamble.
It’s difficult to see. They hurtle aimlessly leaving clouds of smoke that hang
heavy before surrendering. I wait for them to halt and stand near the bare
bones of one of many stations that collapse, cascade, and drift away when a gust
of wind takes fancy. Stations in motion. A vestigial impulse makes them stop as
they wait for travelers to board but most families that journeyed during The
Divide are dead. They clutter the floor, and while it seems disrespectful to walk
among corpses, she pulls me from train to train with urgency. Sometimes we
stop and watch from the windows of trains that’ve stopped: voyeurs peering
into the annals of history; other times we board trains animated by the bustle of
specters bound on an interminable journey. I see a freight train bursting from
the seams and hear the screams of men gasping to breathe. “Are these the ones
that survived the Great Divide?” She looks at me and says, “Nahin—1921.”
Around a 100 men asphyxiated in this train as punishment because they rebelled
against the British. She holds my hand and points to one of the trains: “Dekho”.
We wait for it to stop and get on board. As we walk through the aisles, I see
scenes of devastation that don’t merit the
injustice of words. Barri Ammi walks with
purpose and leads me to the seat where she’s You don’t know me. They mention
sitting. I see her in her final moments: young, my name with caution but hushed tones
determined, full of vitality of the righteous, barely contain my volume. I am everywhere
consumed by nothing but hope as she was and nowhere, an image, a mirror, a double,
leaving. She looks at me as I look at her and she a triple, infinite, zero, no-thing, thing,
says, object, subject. I am seduction, illusion, scapegoat,
بیٹا میں صرف گھر جانا چاہتی ہوں martyr, vixen, villain, sidekick, bystander,
background, back off, I
stand my ground. I am reams, I am texts, I am circulation, I am
motion, I am electricity, I am light, I am noise, I am silence. I am
words. I am words. I am words. I find my story in fragments, I
find my story in silence, I find my story in echoes, I do, I undo, I
am undone, I am done. I am done. I am done.
Sarah Thankam Mathews talks to Palvashay Sethi about “Barri Ammi.”
Palvashay Sethi is a writer and a teacher currently based in Karachi. Her work has appeared in minorliterature[s], The Aleph Review, Severine, Queen Mob’s Tea House, FishFood Magazine, and DAWN. You can find her on Twitter with the ignominious handle @Palvashits.
Seyhr Qayum is an American-Pakistani visual artist, who currently lives and works in Islamabad, Pakistan. She holds a BFA in Painting from Boston University, and has a diverse studio practice, ranging from making largescale oil paintings – a combination of representational and abstract visuals – to creating mixed media installations. Her work centers on female identity and empowerment in South Asia. Seyhr has exhibited her art internationally, including in the U.S., the U.K., and Japan. Along with her studio practice, she is a freelance graphic designer, who with a keen interest in filmmaking, has also worked as a production designer for short, independent films in Pakistan. She frequently writes and contributes articles to various publications exploring select aspects of the art world. You can find her work at seyhrqayum.com, and on Instagram @seyhr.qayum.