Zia Rahman - In the Light of What We Know

Exactly. Why should it? The speculation — a perfectly sensible speculation, it seems to me — is that holding the pencil that way puts your face in something like the smiling configuration. Matter over mind, you see. How you behave affects how you feel. Religious people who value praxis, rituals, and performance, they understand this. Buddhists have long known the benefits of meditation and, by the way, that’s one religion not overburdened with beliefs. I think writing can be a meditation, a praxis, a mode of prayer. Sometimes the discipline of putting things down on paper can help you overcome constraints just a little, and a little might be all you need. You could write in prose or draw a table. Even thinking about column headings could be useful.

Mind maps and matrices, I said.

It might help. You don’t know until you’ve tried it.

Right, I said. I’m sure I looked unconvinced.

I’m sorry, he said. Another beer?

My father got up to go but, taking another look at me, he sat back down. He gave me a huge smile.

It may surprise you to learn, he said, but I have in the past wondered whether I should be more worried than I was about you and your future. I even wondered if my failure to worry made me a bad father.

Really?

Yes, he said, apparently pondering it, but added: In the last century, 1986, I think it was. I forget the day.

You’ve never worried about me?

No, not really. I used to think it was because of our advantages. There’s not much to worry about, I suppose, if you know that short of nuclear devastation or worldwide Communist revolution, your son will live comfortably. But that wasn’t it. After all, your mother worried and she also grew up with every advantage. In fact, isn’t it understood that the lot of parents is to worry? It’s part of the job description.

So why didn’t you?

I don’t know. Disposition, probably. People are different. Maybe when you have children, you won’t worry either. Don’t misunderstand me. I appreciate things are tough now, but I believe you are equal to the challenges.

Why have neither of you ever encouraged me and Meena to have children?

Because we only had one child. You have enough expectations to carry around.

What expectations?

Inevitable ones. Your mother and I don’t have to do anything for you to form your notions of what we expect.

I should leave finance, you think?

Your grandfather talks about his foundation. You could go and knock that into shape.

That’s not the kind of thing I’m into.

Perhaps you could make it the kind of thing you’re into. Why not? I’m not suggesting you should, mind, but just wondering aloud. You know, I may be stuck on this question, but I can’t tell where you chaps in finance actually take on risk. I mean you all seem to stay in the business even when you don’t make your firms big bucks. Even when you do lose your job in one place, a friend hires you into some other firm. You’ve told me so yourself. It rather tickles me that this business that involves gambling — socially useful gambling, I daresay, but gambling nonetheless — this business doesn’t require its participants themselves to take on very much risk.

You don’t approve of finance, do you?

On the contrary. If you wanted, say, to make the world a better place — and don’t for a moment think that I think you should, but it’s impossible to say some things without suggesting an ethical stance — if you wanted to make the world a better place, then I rather suspect the best thing you could do is stay in finance, make even more money, and give it to good causes. Given the choice between becoming an aid worker or funding a hundred of them — it’s a no-brainer. But I’m approaching the question rather less altruistically. I think the best way you can get through this is to redefine what you think your situation is. I don’t think finance will give you the chance to take a risk, the chance for you to take a risk and learn to face uncertainty. Gambling with chits is fine — is it chits or chips?

Chips.

Gambling with chips is fine, said my father, but maybe you could try putting yourself on the table. If I were you, I’d talk to Meena and let it take you where it takes you. And when you don’t know what to say, say you don’t know what to say. But of course, I’m not you.

I’ve never known you to be prescriptive, but what I’m hearing is that I should change my life completely.

I hope I’m not being prescriptive. Change your life by all means, but only if that’s what you want to do. Half the gain is in just wanting change. You know what the problem with politicians is?

What?

They’re the kind of people who want to be politicians.

It’s easier said than done, I said.

Of course it is. Everything is easier said than done.

Quite.

Except talking, he added.

Sorry?

Talking isn’t easier said than done, he said, smiling at me.

But don’t they say talk is cheap? I replied.

And worth every penny. Talk to Meena, he said.

Speaking of talking, I said, acknowledging that he’d deftly brought it back to Meena.

The thing about talking, he said, is it makes you thirsty.

Now you’re talking.

* * *

This conversation took place last year. If I were to put my finger on what it is about it that makes it significant in my mind, I would have to declare that I don’t readily know. At the time, my experience of it was lined with a sense of frustration, which gave way to a feeling of disappointment. Yet it is a conversation that I continue to circle back to, so that I am left to suspect that the significance of a conversation is contained in how it is remembered and that only time can disclose the measure of its effect.

You should write a book.

About what? replied Zafar.

A memoir. An autobiography.

Why?

Put your story down on paper.

Books tend to involve paper. Still.

People read memoirs, I said.

So everyone should write memoirs?

Not everyone can write. You can. You can stay here and write.

How do you know I can write? he asked.

How do you know you can’t? You don’t know until you’ve tried, I said.