I'll Do The Talking Tonight

Ch-1 : OMI

THIS BOOK IS UNDER EDITING. MIGHT NEVER SEE MORE THAN 4-5 CHAPTERS. DON'T GET TOO ATTACHED. BETTER YET, DON'T READ.

PROFILE - 1

Name : Omi Khan

D.O.B : 29th Feb 1948

Father's name : Irreverent

Mother's name : Punam Singh

Place of birth : Lahore

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I was born in the city of Lahore of undivided India, now in Pakistan . But I grew up in the beautiful, congested, uncovered-sewer streets of Old Delhi and and fell in love with it like a possessive lover.

I never saw my father, at least not from when I could recognize faces, but maa would tell me that it was during those days when India got Independence and when India and Pakistan were divided, that we lost our father. No one knows if he is dead or alive , but he fought against the swarm of blood dripping swords, to save my mother in a train carrying passengers across the newly built border of India and Pakistan. My mother, then pregnant with me, considered jumping from the running train, leaving my father behind, than be compromised in front of a unruly crowd. We never saw him again. 

People in my locality would sing lore of the time we were rich and how my father would not flinch before helping even the most sordid of a man, must he shed a tear or two. How my grandfather was the most sought after businessman in all of Lahore and how my elder brother, whose name we never bring to our lips, double crossed my father to take over the business and declare us infringe amongst our own community. Alas we had to flee Lahore to save our lives.  But my mother always quashed these stories as rumors.

We lived in a refugee camp, my mother and I , along with many other people who had chosen India over Pakistan after division . My father was in police. His pistol and bullet-box still intact in the only suitcase we managed to bring back from the blood ridden train. A train of red bodies and black souls. Hindu's killed Muslims in the Pakistan bound train and Muslims killed Hindus in India bound trains. We were on one of the later. My father being Muslim could have stayed back in Lahore, but my mother's defiance  to change her religion from Hindu to Muslim or her name, her modernity found no place in the heart of Lahore, in this new scheme of things where religion was more than a belief, it was a geographical entity.  It was reported, not a single person who waited for the train to halt the Delhi station survived.

Delhi was considered a city that had a place for everyone, no matter that it didn't treat me well, I fell in love with the beauty of the city , because I knew,that one day, it would return love.

In the fight against survival in this new market and among customers who wouldn't touch a thing coming from a Pakistani migrant, my mother had to sell her body . She became a prostitute. And I would sleep on the broken bench outside the whole night, even if it was pouring, even if it was blazing.

During daytime she would continue working menial jobs,picking up rags for the municipality, or taking care of other worker's infants while they were away and in return get enough food to feed me, if not herself.

In the meantime I was growing and my love affair with the city had just started. I did not have a very healthy relationship with my mother I found ways to blame everything wrong in my life on her. I had no one else to talk and I was too small to understand responsibilities. But I could not bear to see her doing what she did in order to feed me.