Picture the Kakoli railgate at 12:30 am December 26th, with the city still sluggish from post-Eid smorgasbording and the convenience of Christmas being a government holiday. All souls are tucked in. Untucked souls are gallivanting at house parties drunk on bootleg vodka. Other untuckeds are in Coffee World, too proud to complain about the price of a latte. Only the guards in their arctic gear are about. A solitary rickshaw waits for a train to pass, heedlessly going CHOO CHOO!!!!!!!! like a wild long-haired man running through a crowd. But there’s no crowd to run through, only the cream soup of cold and fog.
In this show of light-streaks in darkness, a large shape advances. Too fat to stalk, too short to loom, and I’m being kind with the “advances” here since all in all, “predatory waddle” doesn’t really have any style. And I wasn’t really walking with any purpose. Maybe a large shape waddles while scratching its balls (but you can’t see that because he’s got a bitchin’ poncho on). But that large shape, the shapeless hulk, advancing as it were while simultaneously dealing with a testicular itch, is none other than yrs truly, Creative Fellow Arafat Kazi of Bitopi Advertising Ltd.
So it’s midnight, and I’m standing there. Right on the rail tracks actually, because they’re still warm after the passing train and my sandals aren’t doing me much good. Negotiating the purchase of two packs of Benson & Hedges Lights cigarettes from the man called Boss. They call him Boss, he calls me Boss. Like the theme song from
Boss Nigger but I think that joke would be lost on him.
Anyway. Midnight. Hulking now, looming over. I buy cigarettes for me and Ammu. Four wheel drive approaches, stops near me. A moustachio’d curly haired face, looking for all the world like an aged matador, or like Athos from
The Three Musketeers (haven’t seen the movie, mental picture) peers out and looks at me.
He said: “I am Kaisar Hamid.”
What do you do when an ex-Captain of the National Football Team, longtime Captain of your bitterest foe Mohammedan, says hi to you in the long, dark hours when you’re out by yourself buying a cigarette and there’s not a soul about? I thought of denouncing him by haughtily saying that I was faithful to Abahoni, or even by punching him for the one or two matches he’s won against Abahoni over the years. (Any reasonable judge would acquit me. Any reasonable judge would be bound to support Abahoni.) But then I remembered: Captain of the National Team. Even though the list of National Team Captains that I know include my band’s bassist Farhan and his older brother Fazle, they’re basketball players, not to be held in the same regard or even universe as fuckin’ FOOTBALL. And then I remembered: it’s been years since I’ve cared about football anyway, and plus, I never cared
that much.
I look at Kaisar Hamid and said “Assalamualaikum”.
And then that portion of my brain which helps discern reality from that which is not real, of reason from unreason, which in my case is a highly volatile, synaesthetic, arbitrary and frankly temperamental machine, kicked in. Regardless of the many aspects of my life that willfully cock a snoot at the laws of physics and natural aesthetics, there are certain things that should not be. Multilegged creatures dropping from the sky, should not be. Kaisar Hamid should not be wantonly introducing himself to me; he should be pursing his lips at the fat hobo (for Gulshan will one day see the golden day when even beggars can go fat, like in America) and saying “Drive on!” to his chauffeur.
But by the miraculous adipose that flows in my veins, which in my chacha’s case allows him to appear in every one of Sarwar Faruqi’s commercials, stopped this man. The stern eyes that had no doubt stared down Cardinal Richeleu in past lives, battled Scarlet Pimpernels by the dozen and mayhaps even scored a goal or two against Abahoni, was fascinated by the steely lump of stearine solidified in the wintry cold.
I shrugged. I’m fat. Reality is what reality is. Who am I to judge thy grace, reality? Judge Kaisar Hamid not, lest ye be judged yourself by Kaisar Hamid.
Kaisar Hamid is not a man who wastes paragraphs pondering on the nature of his existence. He is, therefore he is. Kaisar Hamid ergo sum. No cogito there. So he reiterated the state of his being.
“I am Kaisar Hamid,” he said.
I am an idealist. I don’t accept reality for what it is. Like Christopher Columbus, Galileo, Baldrick—the great dreamers of the Renaissance—I take what life gives me and idealize it. Usually making circular worlds circle each other, with a great big turnip in the middle. But this time, I was ready for reality. I said, “No way, are you really?”, and then peeked through his window for a closer look. The man, for all that he played for Mohammedan, did not lie. He was, actually, veritably, in fact, in truth—Kaisar Hamid.
I felt like I was trapped in Haruki Murakami’s short story, where Frog saves the world from Worm, and must convince his initially skeptic sidekick that incredible though it may seem, he really did exist. Like Frog, Kaisar Hamid was patient re: my skepticism. Larger than life itself, he understood that others, those who did not move in his exalted circles or hear the harmony of his spherely footballs, must react with human doubt when he chooses to manifest himself. So, to make himself clearer, he said:
“I am Kaisar Hamid.”
Take the bull by the horns, my inner voice urged me. You don’t know when the next night will come when, needing a packet of cigarettes, you will venture out into the cold and be greeted by Kaisar Hamid affirming his existence and proving that he too walks with men. So I closed my eyes, held my breath, and shook his hand. His real hands.
Before I could move the topic of discussion from Cartesian elementaries and Biblical eventualities (Who am I? on my part, to be answered by “I am who am Kaisar Hamid”) to the more speculatory questioning of Darwin or, perhaps, Richard Dawkins (How did we get here and what the hell are you doing?), Kaisar Hamid deftly pirouetted on the Sudoku board of smalltalk and—O visionary futurist!—toe-twirled to the question that Douglas Adams ultimately answers from the window view of Milliways: what happens tomorrow?
“There is a BKSP match tomorrow. You will go there.”
I felt like some watcher of the skies when a new planet swims into his ken and starts bouncing up and down. Just to be sure, I asked for one last time:
“Are you really Kaisar Hamid?” I said.
“I am Kaisar Hamid”, replied Kaisar Hamid, who is Kaisar Hamid. His chauffeur rummaged through his wallet and gave me his business card. As you have no doubt been expecting with Pavlovian sureness—yes, it was Kaisar Hamid.
I had finally accepted reality. Now I would rebel. I said, “But Mr. Hamid, how can I go to the match tomorrow? I would love to, but I have a job, you see!”
“Where do you work?” said Kaisar Hamid.
I said, “I work at Bitopi Advertising Ltd, in the Creative Department.”
“I needed one with a body like yours”, said Kaisar Hamid.
I hung my head in shame. “When do you think was the last time I played football?” I said.
Kaisar Hamid looked at me appraisingly. “Still,” he said.
I heard his “Still” more as a command than as an argument. And I saw that it was true—the night was, indeed, very still. You would not have believed that ten minutes ago a train had passed by, or that eight minutes ago an economic transaction had taken place. If I were to tell you that, no more than two minutes ago, a conversation had taken place here, between myself and the famous football player Kaisar Hamid, you would have laughed.
My friend, Joe Holmes, is now a horse.