The Wish Maker by Ali Sethi Read Free Book Online Page B

hesitated.
    “Samar Api.”
    “Wait!” She dipped a halved lime into the dusty red powder, stroked it lengthwise along her corn cob, licked the lime, shut her eyes and smacked her lips, and stroked it again along the corn.
    “Daadi!”
    Daadi saw.
    “So he should take it himself,” said Samar Api, and lifted the things from her lap and thrust them aside, and then looked away, implying with her manner that it had all been a game or a joke and had earned a disproportionate response.
    “Sorry,” I said, eating.
    But she wasn’t in the mood.
    We went onto the canal, where the traffic had collected in bundles. The small spaces that opened up continually on the dusty side-track were negotiable but required daring. Our driver then was called Barkat, a shy old man who kept his skull in a damp coil of cotton in the heat as well as in the cold. He disliked confrontations and allowed other vehicles to get out of the way.
    “He is careful,” said Daadi.
    But his caution created a feeling of restlessness in Naseem, who knew the traffic laws and admired the audacity of those who broke them.
    “You are not driving a donkey cart,” she said.
    The light ahead was green, and a space had opened up behind a decorated wagon.
    Barkat was driving and said nothing.
    “Go,” said Naseem.
    Barkat said nothing.
    “Go on,” said Naseem, and made pushing movements with her palms.
    Barkat looked in the rearview mirror.
    “O Naseem!” said Daadi from the back.
    Naseem pointed at the stopping cars ahead and said that we had lost our chance.
    Daadi said, “He is the driver. He will drive.”
    Naseem said it was regrettable.
    “Don’t give answers to me,” said Daadi.
    Naseem laughed.
    “Don’t answer!” cried Daadi.
    And Naseem grunted and gave a shorter laugh, and said that it was regrettable and then withdrew with a casual chewing motion of her jaws.

    The one TV in the house was kept in Daadi’s room. It had a bloated screen and stood on odd thin legs, and was capable of being dragged on its small, whining wheels into the other rooms. To switch it on we had to first connect the wires at the back, which Daadi had disconnected to prevent excessive electrical consumption. (She believed in physical isolation, in full severance of physical contact between things.) The TV was old and lacked a remote control; it had to be approached for adjustments, for the color and the sound and even for the channel. In those days there were two channels, Doordarshan and PTV, and we called them India and Pakistan.
    “My India is not coming!” Daadi cried in the evening.
    She had said her maghrib prayer and then gone across the room to switch on the TV, and instead of the channels she had found a gray gushing, which showed flashes of color when she changed the settings, and caught snatches of music from a program called Chitrahar , which was presently showing the new Indian love songs she had intended to watch; but the settings had failed and the gushing had gone on.
    “O Naseem!” she cried. “My India is not coming!”
    And Naseem was sent in a hurry to adjust the aerial on the roof.
    We stood downstairs in the doorway and relayed messages from room to roof until the link was struck, color showed on the screen, and the position of the aerial had been found and was held. Then the Indian songs were watched, and the Indian news, and then the Pakistani news; and after the news came the televised songs of Madam Noor Jehan, who wore colorful saris and stood in shiny settings with her hands clasped at her navel and moved her mouth around to the words of her own songs, which Daadi said had been recorded many years ago in the studios, where real face-distorting expressions were allowed.

    Friday was then the weekly holiday in Pakistan. On Thursday night we went in the car to Main Market, to a shop called Tom Boy’s that rented out pirated videos of Indian films. It was a small, damp shop: the walls were stacked with titles that began with Abhimaan near