12.
Crass Ways of Dying
Sometimes when old friends meet again, there comes a painful lull in conversation. There’s so much to say that you end up saying nothing. A thousand memories, a thousand things crowd out each other. They elbow each other, they grab each other by the shoulder, and they stop each other from advancing. First, me… First, me… So, sir, in that moment when I saw his desperation and felt so bad for him, I was thinking that if he had come with me to Pakistan, things would have been better. Suddenly he broke the silence, ‘Why don’t you come back? When we heard about your heart attack, it was an occasion of great mourning. How did you get this rich person’s disease? I’ve heard that medical science doesn’t yet know its real cause. But my belief is that one day soon a magnifying glass will be invented that will discover that money carries the germs of this disease. My friend, why the hell did you go to Pakistan? What was lacking here? See, you had a heart attack there. Mian Tajammul Hussain did too. Muneer Ahmad had a bypass. Zaheer Siddiqi got a pacemaker. They found a hole in Manzoor Alam’s heart. I’m sure these are all the result of living in Pakistan. Everyone was healthy when they left. Khalid Ali was in London having an angiogram when God took him right there on the table. They packed the corpse in a splendid teak casket and flew him to Karachi. On top of this, our withered, skinny friend Ehtasham died in Lahore of a heart attack. Sibtain and the crippled inspector Malik Ghulam Rasool had heart attacks. Maulana Mahir-ul-Qadri too. If you think about it, who didn’t have a heart attack? My dear friend! There’s peace of mind here. Contentment. Trust in God. No one has heart attacks. Although of course you hear that it happens a lot with Hindus.’
What was his point of emphasis? It was on the fact that everyone in Kanpur dies a natural death. No one dies of heartless heart attacks. I mean, sir, he made my heart attack a peg upon which he hung the exhumed corpses of all our friends. I don’t even remember all their names. After my second heart attack, I gave up trying to contradict people. Now I just assume my opinion is always wrong. This makes everyone happy. So I sat silently listening. And he continued naming all those lucky men who didn’t die of a heart attack but of something else: ‘Our Maulvi Mohtashim died of TB. Hameedullah Senior Clerk, the grandson of Khan Bahadur Azmatullah Khan, died of throat cancer. Shahnaz’s husband, Abid Hussain the lawyer, died a martyr in Hindu — Muslim riots. Abdul Wahab Khan from Qaimganj battled typhoid for a full twenty-five days, but none of the doctor’s medicine worked. He remained conscious and aware of everything right up till the end. Just two minutes before he died, he cursed out the doctor, using his full name. Munshi Faiz Muhammad died from cholera in less than a day. Hafiz Fakhruddin had a stroke and died. But God is great! No one has died of a heart attack. No one has died of such crass ways! I don’t know one well-off person in Pakistan who hasn’t had a bypass. If things continue like this, the day’s not far off when the rich will perform circumcisions and bypasses in one ceremony!’
He started lecturing me on reincarnation and nirvana, but he interrupted himself when he remembered another person. He left off talking about Mahatma Buddha dozing beneath the Bodhi tree and said, ‘Even Khwaja Faheem-ud-din didn’t die of a heart attack. After his wife died, he still had his two daughters. They were his life. But one day he couldn’t pee. The doctor said it was his prostate. They immediately performed an emergency operation, but something went wrong. After three or four bad months, he got better. But his eldest daughter suddenly married a Hindu lawyer, and his youngest married a Sikh contractor, and this ruined him. He was an old-fashioned man in words and deeds. He returned to bed to bewail his state, and he stayed there until he married the Christian nurse who had helped clean him during his convalescence. That whore stayed by his side waiting for him to ask for her hand. But he was reluctant.
Come, you snake charmer, what are you waiting for?
When the disinherited daughters heard that he had gotten married, both sent word that they considered him reprehensible. He screamed, “You unlucky ones! At least I did this strictly according to sharia law!” Sir, while all this did really happen, Khwaja Faheem-ud-din didn’t have a heart attack. When he heard about your heart attack, he was sad for a long time. He said, “Why doesn’t he come here?” ’
Sir, I couldn’t stop myself. I said that if I got prostate cancer, I’d be sure to come back.
Pindola’s Cup
During his school days, he was a very picky eater. He was repulsed by do piyaza, garlic chutney, head-and-foot meat dishes, liver, kidneys, udder-meat, and brain. If any of these were served, he would leave. During my visit, I was invited to one dinner held in my honour where among the dishes served there was pan-fried brain. Sir, to make this, you first have to sprinkle the brain with minced garlic, then once it congeals into little balls, crush it, and all of its bad odour will disappear, as long as you sprinkle in a lot of garam masala and chilli pepper. When I saw this, I was amazed that he too ate everything and was not repulsed. I asked him about this lapse in his dietary regimen, and he said, ‘Whatever comes to my plate was given to me by God. Who am I to refuse it?’
He said, ‘You haven’t heard the story of the monk? Monks begged for food for seven years in order to crush their egos once and for all. Without doing that, a man can’t hope for much understanding. Mahatma Buddha called the beggar’s bowl the king’s crown. Even if someone wants to give a monk more than he can eat at any one time, he can’t accept. And whatever’s put in his bowl, he must eat it, whether he wants to or not. There’s a Pali story about a monk named Pindola. One day a leper put some chunks of bread into his bowl. But when the leper was putting them in, his rotten thumb also fell in. Pindola said they tasted the same. Not good, not bad.’ Sir, after he told this story, he bowed his head and continued eating. As far as I was concerned, not just the brain, but the entire dinner had turned toxic. Sir, now his mind is like Pindola’s cup.
Mullah Monk
People say that the girl he liked committed suicide in 1953. I heard that after that, all his desires went away and he stopped accepting money for his tutoring. That was thirty years ago. If someone feeds him, he eats. Otherwise he scrunches a pillow to his stomach, draws in his knees, clasps his hands and puts them under his right cheek, and goes to sleep. What do you call that? Yes, the fetal position. But I don’t at all agree with the Freudian theory that you like. You sleep in the fetal position too. But it’s not because you’re renouncing anything; it’s due to your ulcer. Mullah Aasi, the monk, says that the Buddha also tucked his left foot on top of his right foot and put his hands under his head as he slept on his right side; this is called the lion position. The lecherous and debauched sleep on their left side; this is called the sex position. I learned from no one else but him that you can spot someone with a bad character simply by seeing how they sleep. In any event, his world is such that whatever anyone gives him to wear, he puts it on. He eats whatever. From whomever. Whenever it’s given. Whenever he gets tired, he sleeps right there. Wherever he is, that’s his inn. His body is his pillow; his mind is at ease. For four days he might not make it home. But what’s the difference? If a good-for-nothing husband stays out or comes home, it’s all the same. May God reward his disciples. They’re the ones who take care of him. I’ve never seen such loving, helpful students. One day Mullah cupped his hands like a bowl and said, ‘Just for a handful of grain, think how much effort the gypsy puts in. If everyone knew that life could be so easy, then the machine of the world would grind to a halt. All this show, all this hypocrisy, would end at once. Inside everyone lives a personal Satan. Desire is this Satan’s other name. As each person breeds desire and gives it free rein, their heart turns that much harder and their life gets that much more difficult. When the dinosaurs got so big that they had to eat 24/7 in order to stay alive, that’s when they went extinct. You should eat only as much as you need to keep your spirit and your body on the same plane. If your body gets fat, your mind will too. I’ve never met a skinny preacher. It’s not possible to pray and meditate with a full stomach, and it’s not possible to be debauched on an empty stomach.’