THE EARTHQUAKE

Dramatis personae
ZAHIR: age 45
ANSER: age 35

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ZAHIR: Do you feel the throbbing of the earth?
ANSER: (Rather indifferently) yes.
ZAHIR: How many days have gone since the
earthquake?
ANSER: (Calculates) that was 8th October… today
is 1st November…twenty-four days.
ZAHIR: We are getting used to it!
ANSER: Used to what?
ZAHIR: Throbbing. (He drags a newspaper from
the Stool and overviews it, a grin spreads on his lips
across to the ears).
ANSER: What is it?
ZAHIR: It is old (reads the date) 16th October
(smiles).
ANSER: what is it now?
ZAHIR: A piece of news.
ANSER: what news?
ZAHIR: A woman gave birth to a baby in a tent
village.
ANSER: Life mocks death.
ZAHIR: Mocks itself.
ANSER: No.
ZAHIR: Yes.
ANSER: Do you know what clergymen say?
ZAHIR: Yes.
ANSER: Punishment of sins.

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ZAHIR: They need a Voltaire.
ANSER: who was it?
ZAHIR: A satirist.
ANSER: Of earthquake?
ZAHIR: No __ of clergy and oafish ideas.
ANSER: Sins can shake the earth__ it is not easy to
negate.
ZAHIR: you are excusable.
ANSER: How?
ZAHIR: Even a philosopher may rave in the eve of
disaster.
ANSER: Who was raving?
ZAHIR: Rousseau.
ANSER: He was in Balakot?
ZAHIR: Nonsense.
ANSER: In Muzaffarabad?
ZAHIR: Clown__ you can crack joke after this
woeful event?
ANSER: Why cant I? If life is going on in its
normalcy outside the quake hit areas, then why
can’t I crack jokes?
ZAHIR: You are one among them.
ANSER: Among whom?
ZAHIR: Clergymen.
ANSER: A bit better.
ZAHIR: In what way?

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ANSER: You were telling me about Rousseau.
Where was he?
ZAHIR: In France__ I was going to tell you his
remarks after the earthquake at Lisbon in 1755.
ANSER: (Bashfully) you must have cleared it out in
the beginning.
ZAHIR: Garrulous__ you speak without listening.
ANSER: Do you speak while listening.
ZAHIR: It was 1st November.
ANSER: Eh.
ZAHIR: And All Saints’ Day. The churches had
been crowded with the worshippers. It killed 30,000
people. And it was 3rd Ramadan on 8th October.
ANSER: What did Rousseau remark?
ZAHIR: He said that man himself was to be blamed
for the disaster. If we lived out in the fields and not
in the towns, we should be killed on so large a scale,
if we lived under the sky, and not under in houses,
houses would not fall upon us.
ANSER: Rousseau’s jest holds more laughter than
mine’s. Is there no winter season in France?
ZAHIR: For Rousseau no, he was the son of nature.
(An aftershock suddenly jolts the earth and they
both hurry out in the open. Anser looks at the moon
and then at Mars which is red hot.
ANSER: The earthquake has affected the moon.
ZAHIR: Who says?

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ANSER: They say.
ZAHIR: Birq.
ANSER: Mars is red because of the blood.
ZAHIR: And you are white with the fear.
ANSER: They say planets can foretell.
ZAHIR: Who says?
ANSER: Astrologist.
ZAHIR: They are murderers.
ANSER: What?
ZAHIR: they are killers.
ANSER: Explain.
ZAHIR: Why didn’t they foretell the day of 8th
October with the help of their planets?
ANSER: It is their style.
ZAHIR: Style of killing.
ANSER: Do you know how I guess that the winter
is approaching?
ZAHIR: No.
ANSER: When the bees are seen dying.
ZAHIR: you are a bit scientific.
ANSER: And ants circle around a dying bees
waiting to see it full dead, to carry it to their nests.
ZAHIR: A dead one is food for a living one.
ANSER: How much is official death toll?
ZAHIR: 75,000
ANSER: Let’s go in, aftershock is done (they go in).

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ZAHIR: what did you learn from this awful
earthquake?
ANSER: (enthusiastically) I learnt new words.
ZAHIR: New words!
ANSER: Yes new words___ tectonic plates,
aftershocks, preshocks, subduction zone,
hypocenter, epicenter, seismology, Richter scale,
relief camp ___and___
ZAHIR: Mutt.
ANSER: What?

ZAHIR: I mean what lesson you learned from this

natural disaster.
ANSER: Oh__ let me think. (Long pause)
First let me know what you learn from this
natural disaster.
ZAHIR: The question was posed by me first.
ANSER: Then this question should be
answered by you first.
ZAHIR: I won’t.
ANSER: you have to.
ZAHIR: (Evasively) When I left the hostel
after the earthquake my servant asked me
“Sir your stock of fruit__ may I take it?”
and I replied in a fit of largesse, “Yes you
can.”

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ANSER: Fruit! How much?
ZAHIR: One kg apples.
ANSER: well.
ZAHIR: One dozen bananas.
ANSER: Extravagant.
ZAHIR: And some dates.
ANSER: Dates?
ZAHIR: Yes dates.
ANSER: Are dates fruits?
ZAHIR: I don’t know. I am not a
horticulturalist.
ANSER: if you don’t know if dates are fruits
or say if you don’t know if dates are not
fruits then how do you know what it is
brewing up under the Earth?
ZAHIR: Foolish question.
ANSER: Foolish answer.
ZAHIR: I want to open new vistas of
knowledge upon you but you damn care an
iota.
ANSER: I know everything.
ZAHIR: You said you were a bit better than
a clergyman.
ANSER: I did.
ZAHIR: But you are entirely dogmatic.
ANSER: An interesting anecdote is bruited
out.

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ZAHIR: What does it say?
ANSER: Two factions were quarrelling over
a piece of land right before the quake hit.
ZAHIR: Might be a moral fable fabricated
for the occasion ___ a day will come when
nobody will be allowed to dig up a well
beyond a prescribed limit.
ANSER: Whose land is it? God’s or man’s?
ZAHIR: Man’s.
ANSER: Blasphemous, some day you will be
executed by them___ them damns.
ZAHIR: Man says it is my land, nature says
mine. He tries to erect houses on it, she tries
to level them. There is an eternal fight
between both of them.
ANSER: who will win?
ZAHIR: It is a three act play___ exposition,
crisis and catastrophe___if exposition we
know every thing, crisis is its culmination
point and catastrophe is obvious.
ANSER: whom you favour?
ZAHIR: Being a man, a man.
(The iron gate of the yard bangs)
ANSER: There is a knock at the door?
ZAHIR: No __ it is an after shock that is
shaking the gate. (Anser stands up to rush
out.)

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ANSER: Let’s go out.
ZAHIR: It is minor, don’t fear, stay in.
ANSER: These days are divided into go out
and go in.
ZAHIR: After the Lisbon quake the king
Joseph I lived in the tents all his life. He fell
victim to claustrophobia.
ANSER: There had been many earthquakes
in the world, why do you always refer to
Lisbon?
ZAHIR: Because of its philosophical and
scientific implications. Kant wrote a treatise
on seismic activity.
ANSER: Cunt?
ZAHIR: (Agitated) you are an old gog, you
will never learn a new things.
ANSER: I am feeling peckish. Ain’t you?
ZAHIR: I have some biscuits.
ANSER: You have some biscuits. That will
do.
ZAHIR :( Tries to listen something) can’t
you hear a strange sound?
ANSER: You are becoming sensitive since
the earthquake.
ZAHIR: No. it is you who has been getting
carefree.

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ANSER: I have seen many mosques downed
by the earthquake.
ZAHIR: God did not spare his own houses.
ANSER: It is the evidence of his
impartiality.
ZAHIR: What did you give as an aid?
ANSER: I offered my cell phone to a man to
make calls to inquire about his relatives___
and you?
ZAHIR: One blanket and a woolen sheet,
and a pillow. I am thinking who would be
using these things. Isn’t it a strange
curiosity?
ANSER: Bizarre.
ZAHIR: My sister says when she abruptly
picks up her baby to run outside, she giggles.
ANSER: Your sister?
ZAHIR: Her baby.
ANSER: Get on.
ZAHIR: She says she thinks she is playing
with her, rollicking her.
ANSER: How fearless are children.
ZAHIR: Knowledge takes our innocence.
ZAHIR: I sleep like a rabbit. It needs five
points something to wake me up.
ZAHIR: I do not sleep well. I am dreaming
terrible dreams.

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ANSER: Nightmares?
ZAHIR: I dream I am in a room whose
ceiling is only two feet high and I can’t stand
up.
ZAHIR: You are listening the stories of the
people who are buried alive under the
rubble.
ZAHIR: Sometimes I dream I am with a girl
in a cellar. I am about to kiss her, about to
advance with more explorations but
suddenly and earthquake collapses the
cellar.
ANSER: My mother used to say when
someone in the family was crawling with
lice, any kind of calamity will occur: poverty,
famine, earthquake.
ZAHIR: Previous night I dreamed that an
army of cockroaches was hovering over the
city__they were in millions__rather
countless__ like a cloud of locust.
ANSER: My father told us repeatedly but
furtively that the night before the war of
1965 he had seen beside the moon two
swords crossing each other and drenched in
blood.
ZAHIR: These are superstitions.
ANSER: As your dreams are.

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ZAHIR: I don’t believe in my dreams, I
recount them because these are fretting me.
ANSER: I do not take my parents as liars.
ZAHIR: Credulous people do not lie. They
believe what they say.
ANSER: How much money would be
required to prevent a natural disaster?
ZAHIR: From occurring?
ANSER: Yes.
ZAHIR: Money is out of question.
ANSER: Gold?
ZAHIR: No.
ANSER: Silver?
ZAHIR: NO.
ANSER: Virtue?
ZAHIR: No.
ANSER: Piety?
ZAHIR: No.
ANSER: You say you have some biscuits?
ANSER: Yes.
ZAHIR: One yes after many nos__ where
they are?
ANSER: In the kitchen.
(Anser goes to the kitchen. By the stirring a
mouse in the kitchen starts and scurries to
the drain)

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ANSER: Why there is no filter on the drain-
hole? (Comes back)
ZAHIR: Did you find biscuits?
ANSER: I did not __ there was a mouse in
the kitchen.
ZAHIR: do you fear a mouse?
ANSER: I feel disgust__ why don’t you kill
it?
ZAHIR: I can’t kill anything that has got a
soul.
ANSER: A mouse has got a soul?
ZAHIR: It is an animal.
ANSER: Do you know a buffalo broke her
cleat and ran out during the earthquake
ZAHIR: There is a will to live in every
creature___ (Long silence)
ANSER: Night is dreadful, silence will make
it awful. Please say something.
ZAHIR: I don’t find anything.
ANSER: Nothing.
ZAHIR: Nothing.
ANSER: A joke?
ZAHIR: Forgive O God my little jokes on
thee,
And I’ll forgive thy great big one
on me.
ANSER: Is it a joke?

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ZAHIR: It is a couplet.
ANSER: But I ask you for a joke.
ZAHIR: Do you want a hear a dirty joke?
ANSER: Sure.
ZAHIR: I fell in the mud.
ANSER: (smiles) It is not possible to laugh.
(Puts his hands on his heart) My heart is
pounding. There is an unseen dread.
ZAHIR: This joke is a comic relief.
ANSER: Is it a relief from UN?
ZAHIR: (grinning) It is a relief from a
somber event.
ANSER: I see.
ZAHIR: Mouse?
ANSER: I mean I understand.
(A loud and restless shriek of a bat is
heard outside. They jump and rush outside)
ZAHIR: We have become coward.
ANSER: No, we have experienced so large a
scale of earthquake which is enough to
frighten anybody anytime.
ZAHIR: A dry leaf falling from a tree is
enough to make my heart leap.
ANSER: And the falling houses__ what is
your idea?
ZAHIR: As if some one is holding his heart
in his hand.

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ANSER: Only a physician can bear this
sight.
ZAHIR: I can’t put up with it.
ANSER: And the sound of the falling houses
__ what is your idea?
ZAHIR: (tries to find the correlative word
and feels a shiver in his limbs) Cataclysmic.
ANSER: I saw a collapsed house.
ZAHIR: And its residents?
ANSER: All dead__ a wall clock was
hanging on a leaning pillar.
ZAHIR: Ticking?
ANSER: No. Dead too__ its little hand
stopped on 8 and the big one on 52.
ZAHIR: 8.52!
ANSER: 8.52.
ZAHIR: Let’s go in.
ANSER: My mother used to say ‘bats and
owls are sinister birds, do not allow them in
your houses to live in. they are harbingers of
bad luck and unhappy days. Owls call the
inhabitants by their names in the wee hours
of the night.
ZAHIR: What is day today?
ANSER: You should say what is night
tonight.

15
ZAHIR: They say it will be Friday on the
Day of Judgment.
ANSER: Fry day.
ZAHIR: You have the ability to play with
words.
ANSER: The day of Earthquake was
Saturday. All our children were in schools
and colleges.
ZAHIR: A disaster does not choose a day__
a day is given to a disaster.
ANSER: By whom?
ZAHIR: (sarcastically) I don’t know.
ANSER: Our shelters become our foe during
the earthquake __we run away from them
and they strike us from behind in front and
on head (puts his hand on his mouth__ their
eyelids are heavy with sleep__long silence)
ZAHIR: A perfect salesman is that who flogs
a fridge to an Eskimo.
ANSER: What is the relevance of it here?
ZAHIR: And a consummate sneak- thief is
that who steals right after the earthquake
and right among the corpses and right in the
midst of help-cries.
ANSER: He must not be a man sir; he might
be a werewolf__ a man from a desert…
ZAHIR: From the mountains.

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ANSER: That serves nature.
ZAHIR: ‘A watchman of the objectives of
nature.
ANSER: Who says that?
ZAHIR: A poet.
ANSER: O, well reminded, I have a piece o
poetry to recite to you (feels in his pocket
and brings out a folded paper)
ZAHIR: (smiling) Once poets kept their
diaries with them__ bulky (brings both his
hands parallel at the distance of few inches
to indicate the bulk) now they keep piece of
papers in their pockets.
ANSER: Now we have certain other thing to
keep with us __ keys, glasses, packet of
cigarettes, lighter and above all a cell phone.
ZAHIR: I am least interested in your poetry.
ANSER: It is about the stinking corpses.
ZAHIR: Stinking corpses?
ANSER: the corpses which could not be
cleared off from the debris after the
earthquake.
ZAHIR: No, no I won’t endure it.
ANSER: Then I have another poem.
ZAHIR: hmm.
ANSER: (unfolds the paper and reads out
the poem)

17
 Amid the mocking sound of a helicopter,
A thud of the sack of the ration is heard,
Among the bubbles of tents.
Below the Earth is giving out the sarcastic
sighs,
Its belly heaves and sages in and bulges out
Like a serpent swallowing a lizard or a frog,
Up above eternal Architect,
Makes a correction in the draft of Indian
plate,
And wipes away the houses with the whim of
dutifulness,
As a bureaucrat will rumple down,
A piece of paper to the basket of the waste.

ZAHIR: I could not concentrate.

ANSER: Why couldn’t you?
ZAHIR: (points to a dirty grime towel on a
hanger) It disturbed me.
ANSER: Do you listen with your eyes.
ZAHIR: I cannot listen when I am on dirt.
ANSER: With this quantity of dirt about
you, you must have been deaf for many
years.
ZAHIR: Do you know when I knew I had
grown old?

18
ANSER: No.
ZAHIR: When in a bus a boy offered me his
seat and stood in my stead.
ANSER: And you accepted the offer?
ZAHIR: why shouldn’t i?
ANSER: By accepting the offer you
confirmed your old age by yourself. One
must not accept one’s old age by himself.
ZAHIR: Until you are alive and young you
are under the illusion that you will never
grow old, then in a sudden old age brings
you down on your walking stick__ this is
humiliation__ certainly a humiliation__ a
man of ego will prefer dying young __ and
obscurely on an undiscoverable place __out
of his house in the jungle __ dogs do not like
being watched dying __ I would I die in the
space and my corpse float eternally in the
void __ weightless and coffin less __ No
burial __ no funeral__ or it is the last day of
the universe ___ no man behind to comment
on my death ___ our letters kill us, our rites
kill us, our houses kill us , our towers kill us ,
our Earth kill us..
(Sound of heavy snorting. Anser is sleeping,
completely unconscious of the throbbing of
the Earth)

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 The end
14 November 2005

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