They Called Him Mad

The girls in their pigtails and uniforms giggled as they passed him. He gurgled inappropriate comments in his phlegmy accent that grew more loutish with every word. Giggling—to Nasreen and her friends—was an easy reflex. The town, hazy in its glory, had always been kinder to men. As you entered it, chatters of men lingered in the air, noises of boys playing cricket in the playground, men reciting their religious verses on the speakers, male hawkers repeating prices like one track record. Even the screeches from the cauldron of bats hanging from the Safeda trees had echoes of a virile pride. The girls did not understand it back then, or rather, they learned quickly, in their quick glances and small gestures, that giggling mollified the worst of the worst, like when the neighbourhood shopkeeper’s eyes lingered too long on their chests, or when a passerby’s hand ‘accidentally’ brushed a thigh.

All of it could be pared down with a quick, hearty giggle.

Perhaps, Nasreen’s fascination with this creepy old man began because he giggled too—as he spat words that pierced like hot mercury in somebody’s ear. He sat on a green iron bench facing the town’s park, where all kinds of people passed. A perfect vantage point for a creep looking for a fix. He limped as he walked, although it was a rare sight because you would always either find him sitting or standing near the same green bench. A vast patch of the paint had worn away at the spot where he habitually sat. His white clothes, hazel eyes, and long white beard painted the picture of a man ready to break into supplication at any moment. One might get sold on the pious appearance until he hissed words like, “Open your drawstrings and throw away your salwars,” or puckered his lips at passing girls, women, or anything close to that.

Once, a comment he made had earned him the limp that became his lifelong companion. In the most common telling of the story that Nasreen had heard in whispers, he had asked a girl to open her legs, and she answered with a fist. Later in the day, the same girl walked through the intersection brandishing a baton. Nasreen saw her like a maddened bull getting ready to charge. Dragging the old man by his collar, the girl rained down merciless blows on him. He only ever giggled through every blow, until, infuriated at the sound, she swung the baton with such force that the old man’s femur and the baton splintered in unison. Soon, his giggles turned hoarse. The crowd watched, aghast.

“He is crazy, show some mercy on him!” The crowd pleaded.

“If he is crazy, I am crazier!” the girl shouted, her breath heavy. Looking at the scene, Nasreen realized that she had never held a baton. To the crowd, the girl was reckless. They gasped at her audacity and worried for her future. For Nasreen, she was the only one in town who had refused to be a spectator.

“So tell me about this Imran who has turned you into a lover girl?” Nasreen asked Saima, her best friend, as they both sipped on Coca-Cola bottles outside their school.

“Don’t get started again!” Saima pleaded, swatting Nasreen’s arm.

Saima continued, “He is really mature. He is going to Canada for his Master’s, so he speaks in English and only listens to English songs. None of the boys in our class comes close to that. Not even your beloved Asif!” Nasreen blushed at the mention of Asif, their classmate, who she had grown closer to because he was unlike other boys.

“Asif bought me chocolates!” She exclaimed as she took out a box. Both of them giggled.

“So will you forget about me when you go to Canada and start speaking English?”

“Of course not, I will take you with me!”

Chewing on chocolate bars, they crossed the intersection where the old man sat—his pajama rolled over till his right thigh— exposing the gaping bruises and the whiteness of the bone sticking out. He stared blankly into the distance. Nasreen was surprised he didn’t mouth his usual obscenities as the two girls passed. It took her a moment to register that Imran, Saima’s boyfriend, was tailing them quietly.

“What is your bf doing here?” Nasreen asked Saima, annoyed by his presence.

“He is just looking out for me. For both of us.” Saima said proudly.

Nasreen scoffed and rolled her eyes at the statement. The old man sat still. Neither of the two men looked at each other, but it seemed to Nasreen that there existed a silent pact between them, some kind of understanding that men call nothing. She felt a cold isolation sidelined girls like her, making them mere witnesses to events they could not steer.

Nasreen was unconvinced of the old man’s insanity. Men were granted madness as an excuse. As if reality could be so disillusioning that they had to blunt it down with something like unreason. Their intentions were always based on established assumptions of ignorance. However, women were never just mad; they were also hysterical, malicious, and fallen. With women, there was always premeditated intent. Even in her lunacy—a motive, a crookedness. Even in her saneness, a hint of derangement. Nasreen realized it during her impressionable years, watching her mother run her household while her father drank himself away to death. Yet in the town’s telling of their story, it was her mother who was the difficult one, the kind of woman that men can never be at peace with.

Nasreen toyed with this idea of madness long enough to convince herself that it was a sham. Nasreen saw him on her way to school. The old man giggled, like clockwork, mumbling explicit sexual innuendos as his hand hovered over the broken femur, as if his broken bone had opened up a portal of crassness inside his head that blurted out vivid vulgarities. He also looked less menacing than before—like a character planted for comic relief. Since he could not stand up anymore, his claim on the bench seemed even more concrete. His white kurta covered the bench in a manner that made the bench seem like a limb growing out of him.

On her way back, Nasreen asked her 20-year-old cousin to walk her to the intersection. Silence.  The old man stared blankly. His face, deadpan. The next day, Nasreen took her 10-year-old neighbour to buy some kulchas from the bakery near the intersection. The old man’s gaze, vacant and adrift. She stared at him from a distance. His clothes, dirtier than usual. A fly sat on his left cheek and continued to buzz around his face, but he didn’t move an inch. He raised his thigh, aggressively scratched his bruises, and went back to his frozen countenance. No giggling, no comments. Nasreen went home and noted in her diary—’ Not mad!’

Nasreen continued this experiment. Walking alone, walking with others, over and over.  She wanted to call out this sham called madness, but her own thoughts felt untethered to her. She wondered; she was slipping into some kind of aberration, too?

After school, Nasreen stalled Saima outside their class, but Saima stayed quiet, her gaze adrift as if she was looking through Nasreen rather than at her.

“Are you okay?” Nasreen inquired.

“Yeah, I have to be home early. Amma is sick, so I have to cook food today.” Saima left without saying goodbye and did not return to school for a week.

The next time Nasreen saw Saima, she seemed even more distant. In class, she sat behind her rather than next to her. As soon as recess started, Nasreen walked up to Saima and asked where she had been last week. Saima gave a confused response. And then, Nasreen’s eyes fell on this strange, coin-sized, deep-wine coloured blotch on her neck. It looked like a blot of red ink, pressed inside a sheet of paper. It looked alive, as if something had latched onto her, entered her, and was now controlling her.

“What happened to your neck?” Nasreen asked with concern.

Saima looked flustered and immediately covered the blotch with her fingers. She was pressing it hard, as if Nasreen’s question had induced a pain in her that she had not felt until now.

“I got into a fight with my brother,” Saima said dismissively and continued to do her work.

Nasreen felt an impregnable silence take over. She felt helpless. During recess, Saima sat alone in the class, picking at her lunch. In whispers among her other friends, Nasreen heard that Imran and Saima had been caught doing something questionable, and Saima’s parents had caught them.

That night, over the phone, Asif lectured Nasreen not to hang out with Saima anymore, claiming that she was now “characterless.” He rambled on, talking about how a girl’s haya lies in how much she covers herself, her voice, her actions. Nasreen’s throat tightened with every word. A furious current roared inside her. After a long pause, Nasreen replied in a tone that mimicked his,

“Control yourself. That is my friend you are talking about,” and cut the call.

The next morning, Nasreen left early for school, preoccupied by thoughts of Saima. She saw the old man lying down on the ground, rather than on the bench. He lay still. Curious, Nasreen carefully inched towards him. The man opened his eyes and lunged at her. His fingers grabbed the strap of her school bag. Nasreen dropped the bag and ran. She could hear the rhythmic thud of her shoes, which got overpowered by the noise of his wheezing chest. The man kept giggling as he followed her, his voice turned sinister with every stride. “Open your drawstrings and drop your salwars.” He kept repeating. When she reached the lane near her home, she saw him standing at a distance from her. Still, his eyes were wide, like someone had pried them open. He had taken his trousers off, and his right hand hovered over the broken femur. Nasreen was panting when the neighbourhood shopkeeper approached the old man with a baton.

“Get inside your house!” he aggressively shouted at Nasreen and started hitting the old man on his back. The old man fell and giggled. His pained laughter echoed through the town’s lanes. People watched from their windows. The shopkeeper then entered Nasreen’s house with a broken baton in his hand. Nasreen’s mother thanked him while her father slept. The shopkeeper advised her mother not to let Nasreen roam around alone and complained about her giggling with her friends at the intersection. Nasreen’s mother did not say a word and went in to make tea for him, “Girls are our honour, and you have the responsibility to take care of it.” His eyes fixated on Nasreen’s chest as he sipped the tea, preaching a code of honour that was only native to women, while her gaze fell vacantly on the broken baton.

Nasreen skipped school for the next two days. On the phone, Asif scolded her for being so irresponsible, and she shut him down, telling him never to speak to her again. When she returned, he requested her to meet behind the school. He tried to convince her to get back with him, but she refused. As she turned to leave, he grabbed her wrist tightly and warned her not to leave. Tears welled up in her eyes, but she saw his eyes turning vacant, a smirk forming on his lips—smugness at his strength, at his control. “He is crazy. He is mad. He does not know what he is doing.” Nasreen murmured to herself. For a moment, the world felt silent, and she closed her eyes, disappearing into herself. Her eyes opened to a sudden gasp, and the sight of him wincing and cupping the top of his fly. His knees buckled in half, and his smirk was gone. Nasreen rubbed her reddened wrist that thumped like a bug sting, but she had been stung by bugs before, it was not really an inconvenience, she thought to herself.

“You crazy bitch! Fucking shameless whore!” He kept repeating filth. His words echoed the madness of the man on the green park bench. She saw then, in all the men she had seen and known, the same lunacy, the same apparently unprecedented ugliness. What was then—she thought—the difference between Asif, who had tried to scare her; the neighbourhood shopkeeper, hailed as a protector but still leering; Imran, whose intentions she could not fathom, or her father, lost in drunken delusion. All mad. All were absolved of their guilt. Women’s protection comes at their convenience, as does their violence. Their silent complicity disgusted her.

Nasreen felt a rage growing inside her. The confusion had birthed an anger she should have been too young to hold. That day, she stopped near the intersection, inches away from the bench and stared angrily at the old man—he was bruised and squalid—his kurta torn at the ribs and sleeves. When he saw her standing, his face lit up with fascination. “Open your salwar,” he barked. Nasreen took a deep sigh and screamed out as many curse words as she had overheard over the years.

“You are a haramzaada and a madarchod, you are the scum of this earth who needs to die!” Her mouth was foaming. People gathered around her. He giggled at her, and she laughed even louder. Louder than the old man had ever giggled in that town. The Safeda trees fell silent, and hawkers paused their sales. The old man soon gave up and pretended as if she was not there, but Nasreen pressed on. When she left and passed by the neighbourhood shopkeeper on her way home, she spat disdainfully in his direction and giggled. He did not move from his chair. When she reached home, she looked at her shaky hands and smiled to herself.

That day, Saima called asking Nasreen about the incident. She left out the details but told her how she could not help but notice how the old man looked awfully funny without his pants. Saima giggled. Nasreen giggled, too.

“So, are you also going to Canada, then?” Nasreen asked.

“Yes, once Imran and I get married,” Saima responded.

“I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you, too.”

The next day, as Nasreen walked to school, she noticed that the green bench was empty, with only a patch of chipped paint remaining where the old man had once sat. She lowered herself onto the bench and felt a sense of calm wash over her. Her friends passed by the intersection, their backpacks and pigtails swinging, their giggles filling the air around her.