The poets were picked up at the station in two bullock carts. Every ten minutes, they asked the drivers why they were still so far from town. The bullocks’ horns were adorned with decorative silver caps, and bells hung from their necks. One had the word ‘khushamad-eed’ [flattery] written in henna on its side. It was being punished for this incorrect spelling. I mean, the driver was repeatedly poking the bullock with a cattle prod on the first letter of this word. In my opinion, all banners, welcome gates, and processional arches made to greet politicians and VIPs should have this spelling because that’s the real reason behind all the fuss. Behind the carts, the PE teacher led the teachers en masse with the fathers of the schoolboys right behind them. Then in front of this group the band was playing, and in front of the band there was a boy holding the Light of Islam Orphanage’s black flag that read, ‘O, heaven, we’re not scared of evil,’ and also something to the effect that the people of the earth should start worrying about their souls and give generously to the orphanage. This was the first flag in the history of flags to scold and beg at the same time. Otherwise, the ignorant are content to decorate flags with several colourful stripes and patterns. At the very back of the procession, Lord Wellesley was leading a running throng of all the town’s butt-naked children and dogs. When several music connoisseurs among the poets objected to the band’s music, the PE teacher told them that without the music, the dogs would be sure to set upon them.
O, Samdhin, Your Mare Is in the Chickpea Field!
One week previous to this, Basharat had instructed the bandmaster in the following manner: ‘For God’s sake! Don’t play your foreboding, mournful crap. It’s a celebration. Play something cheerful. You still have a week.’ So they first played a song made famous on the gramophone of 1925:
My son, my son Jumma, please bring me some hot coals
Bring me some hot coals, and bring me tobacco
Bring me a little water
My son, my son Jumma, please bring me some hot coals
Then they played an even more cheerful tune from a famous record of His Majesty’s Voice. It was a hit song in 1930 that everybody sang, including me:
O, samdhin, your mare is in the chickpea field!
After providing this information, the next line had the abovementioned person being invited to the abovementioned place, that is, the chickpea field. I heard this song about fifty years ago when not only did I not have the foggiest notion what a samdhin was, but I had never even seen a chickpea field. It’s clear that the unbridled mare went to the chickpea field because she was hungry for fresh green chickpeas, but it has remained a mystery to me what the man was doing in someone else’s field. I still can’t say with confidence who the song’s main character is — the mare or the samdhin. The song’s lines about rowdiness and moral conduct were such that it wasn’t clear if they were intended for the mare or the samdhin. Other lines were so rough and ready that it seemed like the author was none other than some horse. But please keep in mind that although the mare had been missing since the morning, the samdhin was being called into the field in the evening. It wasn’t clear whether the man was calling her there so that the two could ride together on the mare’s back, or so that the three of them could eat chickpeas together.
Walk on These Very Rocks
When the procession of the eighteen poets passed in front of the school, a small cannon fired eighteen rounds to honour them. This was a small community cannon that was normally fired on the occasion of someone’s birth or circumcision. As soon as it was fired, a raucous chorus of all the town’s dogs, kids, crows, chickens, and peacocks rose up. And the old women said, startled, ‘May religion awake, and apostasy abate.’ The little cannon itself was so surprised by its firing that it kept recoiling back and forth for a while. The poets were being put up in well-off farmers’ houses, and so the farmers came to the school to pick up their guests. One farmer brought a pony for transport and a little coconut hookah to pass the time on the way back. The handful of wealthy citizens in town didn’t get along with Moli Mujjan, and so the poets’ accommodations were at the houses of these well-off farmers, and these lodgings were sure to ruin their sleep for the night. It’s one thing to romanticize country life in poems and novels and to praise its sincerity, simplicity, contentment, and natural beauty; but it’s really not possible for a city intellectual to stay in a farmer’s half-made house or some mud hut. Before you hug a farmer, you have to hug a bunch of things at once: their livestock; their drinking glasses smudged with his ghee-greasy fingerprints; the bread that they have cooked with the very hands that they just used to form dung cakes; their rough hands used to handling ploughs, sickles, and dirt; their hands smelling of love and onions; and their butter-greased moustaches.
If you can walk on these rocks, then you’re invited.
9.
A Short Treatise in Praise and Condemnation of Prostitutes, or His Self-Defense
An Account Of The Origins Of Poetry And Children
For this countrified poetry festival — which, for Dhiraj Ganj, proved to be both quite memorable and its last — eighteen out-of-town poets were invited, and, in addition to those, thirty-three local poets showed up, invited or not. Among the out-of-towners, there were those who came despite the lack of money it promised because, after all, it was a village, and so they expected the festival organizers to give them some vegetables, baskets of dried fruits and harvest products, and a half dozen or so chickens in a leather bag. In Dhiraj Ganj, there were some mischievous young men who were notorious for having ruined a number of poetry festivals in the vicinity. Basharat had an unusual method for disciplining them. He had an old friend who after failing the final high-school exams for a handful of years had gotten sick of the examiners’ stubborn unwillingness to acknowledge that he was a true gem and so had got a job in the Income Tax Department. He wanted to work there not just for its cathartic possibilities but also to punish the notorious department. He found the department’s atmosphere just right for composing poetry. He liked his job so much that he wanted to keep it until he retired. He had a lot of children. He composed poetry anywhere and much too often. The birth of his poetry and his children was inspired by the same thing. I mean, he blamed the Fountain of Plenty (the Grace of God) for the arrival and abundance of both. He couldn’t even write a simple sentence without adding rhyme and metre. Prose made him as uptight as poetry makes everyone else.