Then after several days, he started up again, ‘Son, what do you do on Sundays?’ Basharat answered, ‘Nothing at all.’ Maulvi Muzaffar replied, ‘So you’re just sucking in air, is it? That’s most improper. Sir Muhammad Iqbal once said, “O, Muslim youths, have you ever thought about this?” A young man shouldn’t sit around idle like that. School gets out early on Friday. After Friday prayers, why don’t you take care of the orphanage’s correspondence? You’re like family. Why should I keep things from you? Your salary actually comes from the collection for the orphans. For three months, you haven’t been paid. I don’t have a lamp like Aladdin. Actually, the orphans don’t generate as many expenses as you teachers do! Why don’t you take your bike and go collect donations for the orphans on Sundays? It’s good work. It’ll also save you from the sin of idleness. Thanks be to God, there are plenty of Muslim families in the countryside around here. Work hard, and you’ll find God. What’s the problem in finding a couple stupid donors?’
Basharat was thinking about how in the world he would be able to recognize potential ‘donors’ when Maulvi Muzaffar dropped the second bomb. He told him not only to bring back donations from the surrounding countryside but also to find eligible orphans as well!
The Ideal Orphan’s Mugshot
It seemed to Basharat that finding orphans would be even more difficult than soliciting charitable donations. That was because Moli Mujjan set in place firm limits: the orphans shouldn’t be the healthy, muscular types; rather, they should look a little pathetic. They shouldn’t be gluttons; they also shouldn’t be so young that they have to be spoon-fed. They shouldn’t be such big eaters that they gobble up one piece of bread after another and don’t even burp afterwards. They shouldn’t be so pampered that if one mosquito should land on the prince’s rosy cheek, then he would fall ill with malaria and so gulp down bucket after bucket of milk like there was no tomorrow. So many boys have hollow legs. They should be skinny on the outside, but healthy on the inside. They shouldn’t be so feeble that if you ask the little princes to get some water from the well, then they fall in with the bucket. Or that as soon as you put a bucket brimming with water on their heads, then their hips start swaying like kathak dancers, or dirty dancers. Like this, they will break a bucket every day and then bring its rim as proof of their misdeed. As though they were right there in front of him, Maulvi Muzaffar suddenly started scolding the boys, ‘Hey, what is that? Is that a necklace? Is it your mother’s or sister’s? Get it out of here.’ Then his recitation continued. They should be average height and not too old. They shouldn’t be so big or brash that if you slap them, your hand will sting for hours and the bastards’ cheeks will escape unscathed. In the winter, they shouldn’t be too affected by the cold. If the weather gets a little cool, they shouldn’t go wandering throughout the countryside shivering and shuddering and shaking, and so giving a bad name to the orphanage for no reason at all. Basharat was told to make sure they didn’t wet their beds. And that the family had no reported cases of lice and no congenital diseases. As for their growing, Moli Mujjan made clear that they should be not just slow growers but actually permanently stunted so that every year they wouldn’t create a stir about needing new clothes and shoes. One-eyed, crippled, blind, deaf, and dumb — yes, but they should only seem to be. The boys should never be good-looking. They shouldn’t have pimply faces or long noses. Boys with long noses will eventually become gay. While he was describing the mugshot of the ideal orphan, he kept turning to look at Basharat in the same way that portrait painters inspect the model’s face while making an outline on the canvas. He kept on talking. But Basharat’s attention had strayed. One after another despicable portrait passed through his mind. But he never once thought of himself.
Maulana Rumi’s Masnavi and the Orphanage Band
First scene: The train’s guard waves his green flag and whistles. As the train starts to move, six boys leap into a third-class compartment, from which a man selling kohl and luxurious salajeet ointment descends. The boys are wearing knickers and shirts. Only one boy’s shirt has any buttons left on it, but his sleeve had been ripped clean off from the shoulder during a scuffle. None wears shoes. All wear hats. One boy carries a large picture frame with a certificate signed by some unknown local politician. As soon as they enter the compartment, they elbow and push their way in further to secure their spots. Once the train leaves the station, the biggest of the boys gets out a tin can filled with loose change and starts rattling it like a tambourine. The compartment falls silent. Then the babies crying in their mothers’ laps startle from fright and start suckling, and the babies that were suckling suddenly start crying. The men stop staring at the women sitting in front of them, and these ladies’ husbands stop yawning. And when all the passengers stop doing what they had been doing and turn in the boys’ direction, then the boy with the tin can stops rattling it. His companions turn their faces toward heaven, and, in a sign that they have established contact with the divine, they simultaneously roll their eyes back so far that all you can see are the whites of their eyes. Then they all start singing the chorus of a very foreboding song: ‘Please listen to our pleas too / Once we too had mothers and fathers.’
All the orphanage’s boys who entered the third-class compartment had adult voices except one, and he led the chorus in his shrill voice. Back in those days, there was not even one passenger from Peshawar to Travancore, or from Calcutta to Karachi, who didn’t know these foreboding songs. Since the time that trains and orphanages came to South Asia, this has been the only song they have sung. It reminds me how five hundred years ago, somewhere in South Asia, a misanthrope set some of Maulana Rumi’s Masnavi to music in an ustu khuddus3 style, and, like this orphan’s song, that song too hasn’t changed in over five hundred years. This misanthrope’s setting of Rumi’s poetry must be sung with a nasal intonation, and only those imams can sing it that truly believe that singing is forbidden. If you want to turn someone off to singing, mysticism, Persian, and mullahs (and all at the same time), then just listen to a little of this song.. (I didn’t write ‘Please sing yourself’ because this song can be sung by only those men who have never heard Persian spoken by an Iranian and who never eat chicken except when it’s free.)
Second scene: The orphanage band is playing. The bandmaster walks in front, swaying his head from side to side. The bandmaster is walking with his stomach jutting out, and so quite the opposite of weightlifters, army soldiers, and scandalous women. Some of the boys are holding horns that look like jalebis, or like the writhing of angry young men. Even though the boys have put the mouthpieces to their lips, the poor souls don’t have enough wind to blow through them. And so, for the most part, you hear the drums and the flutes. Sometimes you don’t even hear the flutes as they gasp for breath, and so the drums are all you can hear. Mirza says that you wouldn’t wish a wedding band like that upon even your worst enemy. Wherever you went in South Asia, it was exactly the same melody. Yet there were several interesting differences between Hindu and Muslim bands. For one, Muslim bands almost never had cymbals. And the drummers in Muslim orphanage-bands played with such fervour that while they spun around, with each time they struck the drum, their fez’s tassel spun 360 degrees around their heads. Instead of tassels, Hindu orphans used their religious rat-tails. Secondly, for Hindus, only orphanage bands played this song. But, for Muslims, being an orphan was neither here nor there. In Karachi, I’ve heard school marching bands play this tune on their sports day: ‘Once we too had mothers and fathers / Once we too had mothers and fathers.’