But after the first test, not a single question of his ever appeared. He could no longer show his face in public. On his behalf, we can say that at least he had had a sincere heart when he tricked all of God’s creatures. That year, every boy who had failed within a fifty- or sixty-mile radius of Kanpur claimed he had done so because he had used Mullah Aasi’s test prep. The worst part was when these repeat failures — who every year were used to cursing out their fates as well as their examiners — set Mullah Aasi within their sights. When they started launching vituperative attacks against him, he secretly slinked off to his grandparents’ house in Amroha. One boy’s uncle even beat up Mullah Aasi’s uncle in the busy market. For over a month, no old person in his family dared leave the house.
So, sir, this was our Mullah Aasi Abdul Mannan. Except these eccentricities, he was no different from any other youth of the time. The other day you quoted a singeing remark of Mirza Abdul Wadud Baig’s. Really, what was the worst associated with youths back in those days?
Year-long loafing
Ascetic practice implemented before exams
Acne
Rabblerousing at poetry festivals
Agha Hashr Kashmiri’s plays
Reynold & Maulvi Abdul Halim Sharar’s Islamic novels
A half-litre boiled milk before going to bed
Regular push-ups & onanism
Bathing every Friday
Conversations at night
Solo goosestepping in front of the ladies’ compartment at the train station
Shouting slogans against the British while hoping they’ll hire you
Mullah Aasi died a bachelor. He never wore a bridegroom’s garland, and he never heard the shehnai played for him; he never had dates distributed at his wedding, and in the end he shrivelled up like a date. I tried to get him to talk about it. He wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole. He would begin to talk in esoteric phrases that didn’t sound like him: ‘My whole life was so chaotic that I never had the time to consider matrimonials and other means of leisure and lechery.’ (Yes, Mullah Aasi uses these choice phrases in place of ‘marriage.’ What pleasure you get from listening to him comes half from his way of talking.) ‘Women or no women, I never thought my life was lacking anything. However, if women feel they were deprived of any of their rights, I have no knowledge of this. May God forgive me…’ He went on like this. He still lives in the room in which he was born. It was suffocating to realize he had lived his entire life — seventy or seventy-five years — in one neighbourhood, in one house, and in one room. In Karachi, you don’t get even a grave for that long. When the gravediggers notice that over the course of one year no one has come to recite the fatiha above such-n-such grave on Shab-e-barat, or Eid, or Bakrid, then they remove the skeleton in order to make room for a new corpse. When the trumpet is sounded at the end of the world, then one hundred and one corpses will arise from each grave. The last one will be the gravedigger’s.
6.
This Was the Cure for the Old-Time Believers
Sir, the truth is that there are a lot of crackpots in the world, but Mullah Aasi was something altogether different. One of his acquaintances said that after one final Waterloo, he lost it. He belongs to the Malamatiyya Sufi sect. He prays in the same way that many Muslims drink alcohol, that is, on the sly. It’s the same sect of which Hazrat Madhav Lal is said to be a member. One man said, ‘It’s been ages since he became an apostate.’ Another replied, ‘When was he ever a Muslim?’ Haider Mehdi told me how he had once asked him, ‘Mullah, is it true you’ve become Buddhist?’ He laughed and then said, ‘When I turned fifty, I realized you can’t trust life. Why shouldn’t I try to correct my bad faith? The night is wearing on, and I’ve tried out so few things.’ One day he was in a fine mood, and so I asked, ‘Maulana, so what’s so good about Buddhism other than the fact that Mahatma Buddha slipped out of his house while his wife Yashodhra slept?’ He smiled, then answered, ‘I am my own Yashodhra. But that fortunate one will awake in my next life.’
One of his confidantes went so far to say that he had made clear in his will that his corpse should be taken to Tibet. The poor Tibetans! What had they done to deserve that? They had never hurt him in any way. But Professor Bilgrami, who teaches English at a local college, strongly refutes this. He says that Mullah Aasi asked for his uncleaned body to be consigned to the funeral pyre, just like that of the author of Lady Chatterley’s Lovers, D. H. Lawrence. Lawrence’s widow grew afraid that some of his fanatical devotees would steal his urn (with the ashes inside), and so instead she had his ashes mixed with cement to make a very heavy slab that people could come kiss before leaving. Long story short, everyone had something bad to say about him. As for me, I once saw a prayer rug positioned backwards on his mother’s little wooden prayer stool that was set in the corner. I mean, the rug’s arch design was facing east not west. I heard that he sits on it in yogic poses and meditates. I also saw a beggar’s bowl. A friend of his had remarked that should Mullah Aasi ever take a full-time job, then he would go beg with this bowl from house to house. There were five or six books on Buddhism on the table. I riffled through them. God knows who had underlined them for him. He kept only one decorative item. That was a human skull, which people joked was that of Gautama Buddha, before he reached nirvana.
There was a giant pair of tongs resting on a neatly folded maroon cloth. They looked like Alam Lohar’s. One jealous man made fun of them by saying that when Mullah Aasi goes to Mount Sinai to fetch fire for his satak’s15 bowl, he will grab the Ten Commandments with these very tongs and then stomp his way home. Nearby there was a pair of wooden sandals like sadhus wear — the ones whose toe pieces were like the camel pieces in chess. On the little prayer stool, there was an earthen cup, iktara, withered tulsi leaves, and a Buddha statue. In short, it was a ready-made Buddhist museum, though its paraphernalia was covered in dust. To me, it seemed like it was all for show. Like he was spiting himself just to piss off others.
We Hold the Hell for Infidels in Our Chests
Some thought that he went to these lengths just to piss off Muslims. But that doesn’t seem true. That’s because Muslims have never opposed the idols of Hindus, Christians, or Buddhists; rather, thanks to Islamic law, they are always on the lookout to insult each other over sectarian issues and to brand each other as infidels.
We hold the hell for infidels in our chests
Open Sesame!
Try to guess what he does for a living. I’ll give you two minutes. (Then after just thirty seconds…) Sir, he’s a tutor! He helps underprivileged boys study for their final high-school exams. He gets home at midnight. Walking five or six miles is nothing to him. He said, ‘Riding conveyances makes your ego swell. Except donkeys. That’s why the Jewish prophets all rode donkeys.’ But I heard he never accepts money. About this, he said, ‘In the East, there is a long tradition that you shouldn’t accept money for water, advice, or teaching. If you do, you won’t feel good about it, and when you die you can’t take money with you anyway. Education that you have to buy never results in spiritual growth; never has, never will. Real change only comes about through enlightenment, and that has no price.’ God knows how he gets by. It can’t be due to a hidden hand because Buddhists don’t believe in God and His infinite benevolence. Buddhists prefer to beg. Actually, Mullah Aasi has fortified himself with philosophy. I didn’t get it at all. You can call it craziness or nonsense, but that’s just him. Who would have guessed that a boy who hated studying that much would turn to teaching as a route to nirvana. I don’t remember if you said this or me, but, for us, those boys who suck at studying join the military, and those who are physically unfit for that end up as college teachers. Sir, nature finds a place for everyone. Once upon a time, Mushtaq Sahib, even you really wanted to be a professor. God had mercy upon you and made sure that never happened. And, as you know very well, I was a teacher for many years. If you ask the truth, that was the happiest time of my life. See,