Let’s wait and see what happens
If this doubt is borne out or not
In order to postpone this humiliation for two more years, many boys applied to MA or LLB programs. All the Muslim boys that Basharat knew, who three years previously — meaning, in 1933—had got their BAs, were now jobless and loafing around, except for the one lucky soul who came in first (among Muslims) and was now a PE teacher at the Muslim middle school. The frightening worldwide economic slump and unemployment of 1930 was still not over. For a rupee, you could have got fifteen kilos of wheat and a kilo of pure ghee, but who had a rupee?
Sometimes despite himself, he would truly hope he had failed. It would be better that way. That way he would be able to live for another year without worry. As Mirza says, ‘After you fail, you have to suffer people’s disrespect for only one day. Then everything’s fine. What happens is this: it’s just like at Eid when each and every old person in your family comes to your house, only in this case they will take out their years of pent anger in explaining your failure, and hence the family’s disgrace, according to their own sense of things.’ In those days, whatever a young person did would bring disgrace upon the family. Things weren’t like they are today: for one, now you can’t find a family that’s worried about shame. I’ve also noticed on many occasions how a family’s elders, both those nearby and far away, would, according to their relationship and strength, take the time to beat the boys with their own two hands when they failed. This lasted up to the sixth or seventh grade. But when the boys’ hands and feet started growing, and they had grown so much that they cried in two voices at once (meaning, when they were thirteen or fourteen years old), then the elders didn’t beat them. That was because they feared they would hurt their hands and sprain their wrists. So they satisfied themselves with scolding and gnashing their teeth. Each of the elderly would weigh the certified and authentic worthlessness of the boy in question against their own supposed educational achievements, and seeing only wreck and ruin in the new generation, the old fogies would come to the welcome conclusion that the world still needed them. They would say to themselves, ‘How on earth can we turn over control to this worthless generation!’ Mirza says that they always spoke to the young as though they themselves were prophets, ‘When you grow up, you’re not going to be anything!’ Sir, even idiots like me could tell that was going to be true! For this sort of prophecy, it wasn’t even necessary to be a white-bearded mullah or an astrologer. In any event, this farce would take only one day. If he passed, he would enter into an age of trial and tribulation with one misery following hard on the heels of another.
Basharat and Shah Jahan’s One Desire
In the end, his second suspicion proved true. He passed. This pleased him, surprised his teachers, and absolutely floored his family. That day he took the time to write out BA after his name and to stare at it from different angles, in the way that artists stand back and look at their paintings. Then once he even wrote in parentheses ‘first attempt’ after BA. But there seemed something boastful and arrogant about that. Soon afterwards he found a piece of cardboard and wrote his name in blue ink, ‘BA’ in red ink, and stuck that on his door. A couple weeks later he saw in a local Urdu newspaper an ad for the Dhiraj Ganj Muslim School — they were starting a ninth grade the next year and were looking for an Urdu teacher. The ad also promised that it was a permanent position, that the work environment was chaste and peaceful, and that the monthly salary was reasonable. To explain what ‘reasonable’ meant, the ad had in parentheses the following: ‘25 rupees, with allowance, per month, and a quarter rupee raise per year.’ When the crown prince Zafar made Muhammad Ibrahim Zauq his teacher, he set his salary at four rupees a month. Maulana Muhammad Hussain Azad writes, ‘When Zauq’s father saw the salary, he forbade his only son from taking the job. But fate called out, “Don’t think just about the four rupees. They’re four pillars in the hall of the Kingship of Poetry that’s now within your reach. Don’t let this opportunity slip by.” ’
But what he liked was the promise of the peaceful work environment. Dhiraj Ganj was a small town between Lucknow and Kanpur. It was so small that everyone knew each and every family’s dirty business, and that, going back generations. Not only did they know the contents of each clay pot cooking on each stove, but they also knew which houses were frying with oil. People were so nosey that no one could do anything interesting at all. And, when it came to nitpicking, the town put to use every ounce of its collective talent.
For a long time, Basharat had hoped that fate would be kind and grant him his wish to become a teacher. People respected teachers a lot. His father had a lumber store in Kanpur, but in comparison to his father’s business, every other profession on the face of the earth seemed more interesting and less disgraceful. As soon as the news came that he had earned his BA, his father, to please Basharat, changed the name of his shop to Educational Timber Depot. Against his will, Basharat worked at the store for a couple of days. He showed no interest in it at all. He used to say, ‘Just to sell something, you have to tell lies from morning till night. If you try to be honest, you don’t sell anything. The store was full of sawdust, and customers had to yell to be heard.’ As a young boy, he had wanted to drive trains, and after he grew up, he changed that to wanting to be a teacher. A classroom is nothing less than a kingdom. A teacher is another kind of sovereign. That’s why Aurangzeb hadn’t allowed Shah Jahan to teach kids while under house arrest. Basharat considered himself luckier than the king, especially since he was to get twenty-five rupees as a salary.
There’s no doubt that back then teaching was a dignified, honourable profession. There were two important things for your life and career. First, respect. Second, peace of mind and freedom from worry. Never in the history of the world has honour been so prized as it used to be in the subcontinent. There is no real synonym in English for this term. When English journalists and famous writers use this word in English, they often use the word ‘izzat’ without bothering to translate it. Even today when the older generation blesses someone, whether or not they mention health, personal safety, the blessing of having a lot of children, being well off, or seeing their faith grow stronger as they age, they are sure to ask God that He protect the honour of the younger and older generations, in that order, and, when it comes time to die, that He take from the world (with honour) the younger and then the older generation, in the same order. Even when it comes to jobs, we don’t pray that we perform well, or that we have means of advancement, but rather our only wish is that we retire with ‘honour.’ This wish doesn’t exist in any other language or country in the world. The reason for this is that we have more, and more various, opportunities to be disgraced than people anywhere else in the world. Working people consider disgrace a professional hazard and so bear with it. The habits and hells of the feudal system don’t disappear overnight. In those days, servants called themselves ‘salt-eaters’ and considered themselves loyal. (In ancient Rome, the soldiers were paid in salt in lieu of currency, and slaves were bought for salt.) A salary wasn’t the just recompense for hard work; any money exchanged was charity, or just a tip.