‘For God’s sake, try it once and see. You think Pakistan is different from how it really is. People’s lives suck there too! Come for my sake. At least for a week.’
‘Who will ask about me over there?’
‘Then think of it like this — in a crowd of people wearing crowns, the crownless person coated with dust stands out.’
Who knows if he really was convinced or just felt defeated, but he said, ‘Brother, I was just throwing some grain your way, but now you invite me to your perch. I’d love to go, but God knows what would happen to my pigeons.’
‘Their fate doesn’t rely upon God’s wishes, but the cat’s. But, look, since when did you believe in God?’
‘It’s a figure of speech. The jamun tree you see there was planted by my grandfather. After the morning star has just set, or at dusk when the evening is growing deeper, you can see through this window hundreds of birds on this tree chattering because they’re so happy. It does something to you. Who’s going to take care of this tree?’
‘First of all, this old jamun tree isn’t tied to you. It doesn’t need you, and it doesn’t need Buddhism. It needs cow-dung. Second, you’re confusing things. Mahatma Buddha became enlightened not under a jamun tree but a pipal tree. But, for the sake of argument, if you can’t live without taking care of birds and trees, then you can look after Karachi’s emaciated donkeys and, in Lahore, the Upper Mall’s jamun trees — and that to your heart’s content. We put up ladders before the jamun fruits ripen. The good folks of Lahore don’t throw stones at the fruit on other people’s trees like they do in Kanpur. We carefully climb the trees, eat the fruits there, and serve them to the orchard keepers as well.’
‘I’ll go. One day I’ll go for sure. But some other time.’
‘What’s the harm in coming with me now?’
‘What will happen to these kids?’
‘What usually happens. They’ll grow up. No one will miss you. You’ll die, and then what?’
‘So what? These kids, and their kids, they’ll live on. They fill my heart with joy. When I die, I’ll speak through their mouths. I’ll see through their eyes.’
(This is where Basharat’s narration ends.)
Postscript
So He Too Had A Heart Attack
On December 3, 1985, just before the sun rose, and just as he had said, when birds were chattering playfully in the jamun tree as though they were ready to die themselves, Mullah Abdul Mannan Aasi had a heart attack and died. The neighbourhood mosque’s imam declared that there was no need for a funeral prayer for the infidel. When the deceased didn’t believe in God, what would be the point of asking for forgiveness and mercy? The procession lingered for quite a while underneath the jamun tree. In the end, one of his students played the part of the imam. Hundreds of people were in attendance. Before the ritual rites were performed, his black box was opened in front of the neighbourhood dignitaries. Inside, there was a note left on a piece of paper from a school copybook. It was written in pencil, but it didn’t have either date or signature. It read:
To Whom It May Concern:
All my assets should be sold at auction so that a trust can be established for my pigeons. Care should be taken that no trustee eats meat. Also, please don’t bury me in Kanpur. Lay me next to my mother in Lahore.
1‘Two Tales of the City’ is the inverse of A Tale of Two Cities. Or, in other words, it is the story of a city of two stories.
2Translators’ note: Buzary refers to Hazrat Abu Zar Ghaffari, a companion of the Prophet Muhammad, who shunned a life of extreme luxury in favour of poverty.
3 Inamullah was once very proud of being brutally honest, and that’s why he was called the Loudmouth.
4 Itr-e-giclass="underline" The mild scent of the first drops of rain soaking into the earth was worn in late summer. Now only corpses are covered in the earth’s sweet scent.
5 She was Agha Hashr’s favourite singer.
6 The Hindu custom performed on the near relatives of the deceased: after the cremation ceremony, their hair, eyebrows, beard and moustache are shaved.
7 In those days, the sarangi player and the tabla player were called the ‘sarangia’ and the ‘tabalchi.’ That is, to play the tabla was merely to play the tabla. They felt no need to justify their art. Calling a tabla player the ‘tabla master’ had not yet come into vogue.
8 Khiran: The black, round part of the tabla.
9 ‘The wind is draped in twilight, the desert garden has rings of roses’ (Siraj Aurangabadi). About this, Mirza says that even zebras seem colourful to us in our youth.
10 Kaleidoscope: Calling it a child’s wonder wheel or rainbow maker would be more appropriate than calling it a colourful telescope. Inside it, there are colourful pieces of glass that with each movement produce new colours, configurations, and ‘patterns.’
11 Mirza uses the phrase ‘human urges’ for the actions and behaviours of animals as well.
12 ‘The Song of Quoodle,’ G.K. Chesterton.
13 In 1989, there was an interesting reverse dictionary published that gave for every simple word a difficult, abstruse, and unknown synonym. This dictionary has become very popular in those ranks of society whose job it is to speak plainly and openly. I mean, among professors, critics, clerics, government spokesmen, and business executives. How happy Master Fakhir Hussain must be to see his advice being taken so seriously fifty years after his death!
14 In this, he was following the sage advice of his teacher and spiritual preceptor Master Fakhir Hussain who liked to say, in the words of Saadi, that if you feed partridges, pigeons, and other birds on a regular basis then one day you’ll be able to entrap even a phoenix. The problem was that while Master Fakhir Hussain taught him how to lay out grain, he didn’t teach him how to grab the bird. He himself fed birds but nothing more; in fact, he sacrificed his field’s entire harvest to them. Hoping to catch a phoenix, he never managed to touch even the tail feathers of any bird.
15 Satak: The dictionary says that a ‘satak’ is a ‘pechvan’ or otherwise a slim lady. A pechvan is a hookah with a very long elastic pipe. If we combine these two meanings, then we realize that the elders of yesteryear looked for the traits of hookahs in women as well, and that, after much comparing and contrasting, they decided they liked hookahs and mysticism more than women. This was the cure for the old-time believers!
16 Painjani: ankle bells for pigeons.
17 Taftah: resplendent white pigeon, male or female.
18Black box: That strong, fireproof, waterproof, shockproof box that houses a device that tells you the reason for an airplane’s falling from the sky and killing all its passengers. Or, in the words of the honourable Mr Majid Ali, whether the passengers fell and then died, or died and then fell.
19 Taghmah: In the North-West Frontier Provinence and in Punjab, when people say ‘taghmah’ instead of ‘tamghah,’ they chalk it up as a mispronunciation. In reality, the real word is actually ‘taghmah,’ from the Turkish, and the correct spelling is ‘taghma.’
The First Memorable Poetry Festival of Dhiraj Ganj
1.
The Benefits of Failing
Basharat says that after taking his BA test, he got worried about what would happen should he fail. By the grace of God, this fear disappeared entirely after praying, but he started worrying about something even more distressing. If, God forbid, he should pass, then what? It would be difficult to find a job. His friends would leave to get on with their lives. His father would stop giving him an allowance. With nothing to do, no job, no means of supporting himself, nothing to busy himself… life would turn into pure torture. He would be forced to buy English newspapers for their ‘help wanted’ ads. Then he would have to shape his resume for each stupid job in such a way that it appeared that he had been born into this glorious world just for it. He would have to do this one hundred times. Then he would have to suffer the disgrace of going from office to office until he finally got a job somewhere. Although it was very likely that he had failed, he had a sneaking suspicion that he had passed.