Black Box18
Yes, so what was I saying? Oh, yes, I was talking about the letters that he impaled on darning needles. On each needle, there was five years’ worth of correspondence. These needles were nailed onto a round base of wood. They were the filing cabinets of yesteryear. For the letters of the dead, he had a black piece of wood that served as the base. He said, ‘When I hear that someone has died, I have to go around to all the needles, remove that person’s letters, and then stick them on the one reserved for the dead. And I kept in this black box my important papers and those of a highly personal nature. I’ve drawn up my will specifically so that when I die my remains will be fed to the sacrificial fire. I mean, these papers will be.’
The black box that he was pointing to underneath his bed was actually a cashbox. After his father’s bankruptcy and subsequent death, he was left only with this fortune as his inheritance. Even now he often brags that it’s big enough to hold a hundred thousand rupees. People say that his will is in this box, and the will spells out what exactly he wants done to his corpse. I mean, if he wants to be buried in the Muslim way, fed to the vultures and crows like the Parsis, or taken care of according to Buddhist traditions. Because he was so confused about religion, this sort of clarification was very much needed. It’s like Ghalib wrote, ‘Drag my corpse through the alleyways.’ But, against his wishes, his Sunni devotees buried him in accordance with Sunni tradition, even though the poor soul was an Imamia Shia. Sir, I just remembered. Ghalib really said it best, ‘O, God! Save me from dying like an unbeliever and living like a Muslim!’ He put all that into a seven-word line.
The Truth That You Remember after Death
According to his good friend Sayyid Hamiduddin, the will makes clear that he was a Muslim, that he would die a Muslim, and that everything else was a hoax that he put on to irritate his brethren. So his blasphemy was just trickery. I’ve heard that he instructed others to read his will only on that very day that those unprinted parts of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s book are taken from their safety deposit box. About this, one troublemaker insinuated that in his will, Mullah Aasi wrote all sorts of heedless opinions about Maulana Azad that he never expressed during his lifetime for fear of offending mankind. Just think what slings and arrows he must have launched! The very worst you can say about Mullah Aasi is that he spoke the truth. But, Mushtaq Sahib, what kind of truth is it, if you don’t have the courage to utter it during your lifetime? Each moment has its truth, crucifix, and crown. The expression of truth is appropriate in its moment and only in its moment. Those who remain silent are degrading not only the moment but themselves as well. According to your Mirza Abdul Wadud Baig, after a person has lived a happy life, indulging without remit in the convenience of expedient lies, then when this person is dead and buried, that’s hardly the time to suddenly yell the truth from the top of your lungs!
Love Letters and Gautama Buddha’s Teeth
It was also rumoured that the box held the letters and photos of a Punjabi refugee girl that he tutored. God knows if that’s true. That was before he turned Buddhist. At that time, I had already come to Karachi. Everyone was curious about the box. But his box had an enormous brass lock whose key he always kept tied to his drawstring. But who can stop people from talking? Someone said the girl had committed suicide by slitting her wrists. Someone said it was on account of something unspeakable. It was also rumoured that this girl had another tutor. Other rumourmongers said that her blood fell drip by steamy drip on the road as her corpse was carried to the funeral ghat. That night her father swallowed thirty or forty sleeping pills and was dead by morning. But if you think about it, neither the girl nor her father died. Actually, the wife and her six kids were the ones who died. Three or four days later, someone stabbed Mullah Aasi in the stomach as he was entering an alley. His intestines spilled out. He lay in the hospital for four months, stuck between disgrace and an anonymous death. I heard that it was the day he got discharged that he became an ascetic. But, sir, he was an ascetic from birth. It’s said that if an ascetic’s boy plays at all, it will be with snakes. And if it hadn’t been this one snake, it would have been another. Oh goodness, sir, when a boat gets stuck in a whirlpool, even the Prophet Khizr will make a hole in its hull to drown you!
I don’t know if it’s supposed to be a joke or not, but Inamullah The Loudmouth said that Mullah Aasi kept four broken teeth in the box that he meant to leave as relics for his worshippers and descendants. After all, Mahatma Buddha too left at least a hundred teeth (now under heavy guard) in various holy places where people frequently visit.
Only one thing in the entire room looked new. That was the latest edition of the magazine Irfan. Who knows if someone had sent it to him by mail, or whether some prankster had left it there. I skimmed parts. Sir, this magazine is the highest example of faithfulness. There was no difference between the edition published fifty years ago and the one of today: it had the same table of contents, the same font, and the same look. Thank God for that! It seemed as though the publication house hadn’t changed a whit either! The contents were also exactly the same as they had been in Sir Syed and Shibli’s time. If only this edition had been published seventy or eighty years earlier, it would have been entirely up to date! If Maulana Shibli Nomani and Deputy Shams-ul-ulama Nazir Ahmed LLDS could see it, just think how happy they would have been!
11.
The Deer Antlers
The deer head is still hung there. In that house of torment, only it retains its life-like look. It looks like it’s going to spring off the wall and run off into the forest. Beneath it, there is an oval sepia photograph of his grandfather. Sir, in those days, everyone’s grandfathers looked the same. In a standing pose, they had a big beard, turban, a flowery gown, a flower in one hand, and a sword in the other! Not just after 1857 but in fact well before, noblemen used swords as walking sticks and poets used them as a metaphor for the murder weapon that the beloved will use to kill the poet (and he will enjoy it). This was the period of deterioration and anarchy in South Asia when the daf drum of the war poets lost its status and tablas replaced the war gong. To prove their nation’s greatness, people pointed to their splendid ruins.
The deer must have been seventy or eighty years old. His grandfather had shot it in the marshes of Nepal. He had cut off one horn for the good (healing) of the public. Rubbing a little of its powder helped relieve kidney pain. People came from quite a distance asking for the horn. One dishonest patient went so far as cutting off an entire inch before he returned it. (He said he had pain in both kidneys.) Now Mullah Aasi personally supervises the grinding down of the horn on the whetstone. These sorts of ignorant, magical practices still flourish in India. When he started praising his special ointment, I made fun of him, ‘But, Mullah, the kidneys are inside the body.’ He said, ‘Yes, your father had three or four treatments before he left for Pakistan. He wanted to take a horn with him. I didn’t let him.’
Natraja and Dead Partridges