He got a lively fellow from Lahore to hold his spool. This man was a lecturer at Haleem College in Kanpur. His name was Abdul Qadir. He also wrote poetry. So when the two got together, their kites’ strings were those of endless memories and the glass bits glued onto the strings were those of hyperbole; their strings seemed to unspool on their own, and soon their kites looked like stars high in the sky that would soon reach the city limits of Lahore.
The dust is pink, the water is colourful, the earth is red and the wind is fiery…9
This is where Basharat’s narration ends and Mian Nazir Ahmad’s daydream begins.
Daydream
Now please listen to the story of the high-flying kite that crossed the Ravi River, as told through the voices of those two lively gentlemen from Lahore, as well as Basharat, and your humble storyteller.
Today it’s spring in Lahore. The spring chases away the cold. As the cold leaves, it brushes pleasantly against the spring. The co-mingling of the last rosy cheeks of winter with spring clothes is a sight to behold. Mustard flowers in the fields in every which direction, and later, the late-blooming roses and chrysanthemums will have their moment. Mustard flowers, kites, butterflies, dresses, flowers, cheeks — it’s a rose garden within a rose garden. Yes, today it’s spring in Lahore. Colour rains from the sky to intoxicate the land. In the spring, like during the monsoon, you will never see a dull sky or a weak breeze in Lahore. Like a spoilt child, the spring cries out from all directions reminding you of its presence, begging for your attention, ‘Hey! Look over here! I’ve something else for you.’ Look at how it changes colour. Sometimes the sky is full of stars twinkling like children’s eyes, sometimes the glow of the Milky Way in the distant heavens, and sometimes a shower of golden wires coming from the thick, purple clouds. As the days warm, from time to time the sky releases the water of life, soaking the dry fields and sad eyes. The sky changes moment by moment. It’s perpetually restless. Sometimes it’s kind, and sometimes it’s merciless. In a second it changes from a volcano to a blue lake. For a while, it sits like an angry lover with the dust of deserts pent in its chest. Then its mood clears, and it returns to embrace the earth tightly. As though nothing had happened. The shape-shifting clouds look like the ocean’s foamy waves and then like boats themselves swimming through the sky’s molten sapphire. Yesterday evening the murky horizon bloomed with light as it swallowed the sun, and it seemed as though this new glow would stay for centuries to come. The warm breeze stopped at once. The horizon held its breath; nothing moved. Then clouds began to form, and the skies were lit for hours with flashes of lightning. But today at noon, I don’t know how but the sky became as blue as a peacock’s breast, and if you happened to glance at the sky, your eyes would be smudged with blue. Then, as the night wore on, the sky folded its limpid blue into the river’s transparent sheen. There is only one thing more beautiful, more colourful, and more playful than Lahore’s sky, and that is its verdant land. Four hundred years ago, its land was just as beautifully coloured. And that’s the reason Noor Jahan said,
In exchange for my life, I have bought Lahore.
For my life, I have bought another paradise.
So, in exchange for her life, Noor Jahan bought two metres of Lahore’s heavenly land. But the good people of Lahore didn’t remember this woman (who so loved the city) as she deserved. Now Noor Jahan’s tomb is a roost for swallows! But, sirs! The heavenly city at `the end of the rainbow has become the city of two tales, and looking for the city, the prince chose the path that ended with him being cleaved in two. Now the city’s really changed! Now the land doesn’t reveal its old secrets, beauty, and charm to many. In order to see these things, a person needs old eyes and a child’s kaleidoscope.10 If he had that, then every city would seem like a wonderland…
His daydream ended.
Now listen to the rest of the story as told by Basharat in his circuitous way. (The fun of it is not ‘long story short’ but ‘short story long.’) In so far as my pen and my memory allows, I will try to recreate word for word his special idioms, his way of talking, and his lilt and stutter. Whenever he starts telling a story, his digressions and random asides start telling their own story. He doesn’t even let you catch your breath. Mirza calls this torture ‘the story stocks.’ When Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner starts telling his ghost story, the wedding guest becomes so entranced that he forgets everything about the wedding. Dumbfounded, he stands listening. So that’s sort of what happened to us as welclass="underline"
He holds him with his glittering eye
The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three year’s child:
The Mariner hath his will.
4.
I Am Ibn Battuta, This Is My Masterpiece
So, sir, I went to see Mian Nazir Ahmad’s house, as well. I have a lot of memories in that house, but I couldn’t recognize it. It had undergone a special facelift. Three air conditioners were running. On the verandah, an elderly Sikh man was tying up his topknot with a comb. This was the only house I saw that looked better than before. I introduced myself, and after I told him why I had come, he very warmly invited me inside. He treated me very well. For quite a while, he asked about his hometown, Gujranwala. I made things up as I went along. What was I supposed to do? I’d gone through Gujranwala last year in a minibus. So I took a mental snapshot, enlarged it, and turned it into a best-selling Urdu travel narrative. Well, you love those things. It’s just like Aatish said,
You must set out on a trip to find a welcoming land.
Thousands of shade trees line the road.
But from the slobbering of writers of travel narratives what’s most clear is that once a man leaves his wife at home and sets out on the open road, then life is one pleasure after another. Every step is on a tree-lined boulevard. Each tree has thousands of branches, and on each branch four virgins dangle, waiting for him, and just as this Don Juan passes underneath, these ladies fall into his bag.
How many single ladies the open road holds!
It’s as though his trip becomes an odyssey of assignations — not just from country to country and city to city, but from house to house, door to door, and alley to alley. The traveller crosses paths with women every day, and he remains unsatisfied until each woman has crawled onto his lap and so meets her comeuppance.