*
But he wasn’t about to give up so easily. He was still in search of something by which he could prove his greatness to Dina Nath. One day, when he was reading Treasury of Spells, he leapt up after reading the final chapter. In it was recorded a method by which one might gain control of one’s humzaad. When he read the title of the chapter, ‘Controlling the Humzaad’, he didn’t really understand what a humzaad even was, but there was a description right at the beginning explaining that it was a powerful being born at the same time as every man, which lives within him. If it emerges and you take control of it, it can execute any task you wish—it can give you information, increase your salary, make it rain, tell you the secrets of another’s heart, tell you about another person’s life, help you cross a river, make the woman you love fall for you, bring you delicious food, defeat your enemy, bring you success in court—in short, the humzaad can perform whatever task the practitioner wishes.
Chetan read the chapter several times. It didn’t seem all that hard to control the humzaad and, as he read the book, he became more and more convinced of this. The chapter was written in such a way that little boys and poorly educated people would automatically believe what it said. It explained how many days of practice it would take for the humzaad to appear; if and when it appeared, which conditions you should accept from it, and how you could make it your slave, and so on. It was written in such detail that you automatically came to believe it. Chetan’s childish imagination took flight as he read that chapter. It fluttered about on airy wings. Dina Nath’s magic tricks would look so measly in comparison with the control of a humzaad. Whenever he read the book, his humzaad would appear before him in his imagination, hands bound, like the jinn in Aladdin’s lamp and do anything he asked in the blink of an eye.
Finally, he resolved to do it.
It was summer vacation. The boys of the mohalla would get up early and go for walks on Cantonment Road. They bathed in the deep, bricked tank under a thick stream from the Neeli Kothi well. It would be difficult to attain control of one’s humzaad in the presence of so many boys, Chetan thought, so he decided he would go to Chuparana and bring the humzaad under his control in solitude there. He tied a new loincloth made on a Tuesday around his neck like a muffler and, wrapping a paan leaf very carefully in paper and placing it in his pocket, he set out confidently for Chuparana.
But the fashionable people of Adda Hoshiarpur and Kot Kishanchand all took their morning strolls to Chuparana. There was quite a crowd there in the mornings. In some spots, people were doing callisthenics; in others, yoga. Elsewhere, there would be people discussing their neighbourhoods, city or national politics, and in other spots, they’d simply be enjoying scandals to combat the day’s boredom. For this reason, Chetan chose a well half a mile beyond Chuparana for his austerities. He’d gone that far several times before with his friends. He did feel fearful about going beyond Chuparana alone, but the very first condition for controlling the humzaad was courage, and it was written in the book that the seeker should choose a spot where no interruption would occur during his austerities, so he reached the well a little before sunrise. As he bathed in preparation, the sun came up. Then, just as it was written in the book, he put on his loincloth and stood in the sunlight with his back to the sun. He turned his feet to the right. It was difficult for him to stare unblinkingly at the throat of his shadow with his neck turned. But he concentrated very hard and kept his gaze fixed, as he repeated over and over to himself—‘Oh, humzaad, come speak with me!’ It took him about an hour and a half to stare at the shadow of his throat seven times and at the sky seven times while continuously summoning the humzaad, as was written in the book.
It said in the book that after practising daily for ten days, the seeker would begin to have very strange sensations—he might feel as though a storm was coming, or as though a tree had cracked and was about to fall on him; sometimes beautiful young women would attempt to lead him astray—but the seeker should continue his austerities without being moved in the slightest. All these phenomena are caused by the humzaad in order to distract the seeker and test him. On the twentieth day, the humzaad would come and stand silently before the seeker. The seeker should also remain silent and continue with his austerities. After a few days, the humzaad would ask the seeker for some paan leaves. The seeker should not give it any paan leaves until the humzaad promises to come under his control. However, the seeker should only accept this promise after much thought, because sometimes, even when the humzaad says it will come under his control, it sets extremely difficult conditions that are not within the power of the seeker. For example, it might say, ‘I am prepared to become your slave, but you will have to feed me until I’ve had my fill,’ or ‘You must remain pure forever’ . . . Obviously it’s not within the power of the seeker to meet such conditions. Then a few days later, the humzaad will set an easier condition. The seeker should immediately agree to it. But before giving the humzaad the paan leaves and making it one’s slave, the seeker should definitely get it to agree to two conditions—the first is that it should never come unless the seeker calls for it; the second is that the seeker can be freed of the humzaad whenever he wishes. If he doesn’t demand these two conditions, the humzaad will make his life intolerable—it’ll be hanging around twenty-four hours a day, or in old age, when the seeker’s power and strength have grown feeble, it will not only make it difficult for him to live, but even after he dies he’ll have no peace.
On his way home from Chuparana, Chetan’s imagination took wing. He imagined himself with all phases of the penance completed in the blink of an eye. He imagined the humzaad coming to stand silently before him. Then for the rest of the way home, Chetan imagined demanding conditions of it and extracting promises. As he imagined bringing the humzaad under his control, Chetan’s face lit up with indescribable joy . . . he had no idea how he’d managed to walk such a long way in that crackling sunlight. The magic only broke when he entered his mohalla and his mother asked where he’d been. It was so late already and his stroll had lasted forever.
When Chetan lay down after eating, his neck felt horribly stiff and his calves and feet were quite achy.
*
It was the hottest part of the summer. The sun came out at six or six fifteen, and its rays were harsh even that early in the morning. His body would start to burn from standing naked in the harsh sunlight, but he would only return home each day after one and a half hours of austerities. When he lay down at night, he’d imagine his shadow, his gaze focused on its throat, summoning the humzaad. On the seventh day, he started to have a slight headache and his eyelids felt a bit heavy. Then he realized that he’d been wrong to decide to undergo penance in such hot weather. He should have chosen weather that was neither too hot nor too cold, when the sunlight wasn’t just to be tolerated, but actually felt nice. But at the same time, he felt that the more hardship he had to endure, the more quickly the humzaad would come under his control, and he recalled the tale of Raja Uttanapad’s son, the devout Dhruv. If he could undergo such severe austerities that the god Vishnu was forced to fulfil his heart’s desire, then Chetan was certainly old enough to do the same. Besides that, it was written in the book that there would definitely be some results on the tenth day, so he decided to himself that no matter what, he would do penance with great devotion for ten days and see if the sensations described in the book happened to him or not.
On the tenth day, when he began his penance, he heard no voices, no storm blew, no tree fell over, and no fairy came to distract him. He had a terrible headache—he felt as though his temples would burst, and someone was continuously banging on his head with a hammer. He finished his penance, threw the paan in the well and put on his clothes. He could barely walk on his way home. He felt nauseated by a sharp pain and his right eye was watering. He walked home massaging his temples with his thumb and forefinger, went into his room downstairs and lay down on the floor.
When he didn’t go upstairs to eat and did
n’t respond to Ma’s calls, Ma came down to his room. He lay on the floor, unconscious with fever, repeatedly mumbling, ‘Oh, humzaad, come speak with me!’
When, after seven days, the intensity of his fever had lessened somewhat, and Ma asked him why he kept shouting ‘Humja! Humja!’ Chetan was alarmed—what if the humzaad had slapped him and he had gone crazy, just like his great-uncle Chunilal? But he didn’t see the look of someone who has just seen a lunatic in the eyes of Ma, Dada, or Bhai Sahib. He was able to think clearly, in fact, in even finer detail. He felt like telling Ma the complete truth. But what if it alarmed her? So he kept quiet and when he was up to getting out of bed, he went downstairs to his room (his mother had brought him upstairs to the veranda because of his sickness) and hid that ‘treasury’ of spells. At first he thought he’d tear the book to shreds and stuff the pieces in the stove, but then he held on to it as a memento of his own foolishness.
*
And it was because of this illness of Chetan’s that Dina Nath became a hakim instead of a jeweller.
*
What happened was that although Chetan’s fever went down, his headache lingered on. Either he had become very weak, or because of standing continuously in the sunlight and staring unblinkingly at his shadow, he’d caused himself mental stress. Whatever the case, every second or third day, he’d feel a hammering in his head; he’d get dizzy as he walked around and he’d be about to fall over. One time he had been squatting for a long time while talking to Ma, and then, when he got up, darkness suddenly fell before his eyes and he felt dizzy and fell to the floor.
When he came to after a few minutes, there was a pain in the back of his head, and he felt a lump when he touched it. And his face was damp when he ran his hand over it. Perhaps Ma had sprinkled his face with water and was sitting anxiously beside him. He sat up quickly to tell her there was no reason to worry. But he felt very weak.
Ma took him to Dr Jivaram and to Hakim Nabi Jan, and to Rajvaidya Durga Das as well, but Chetan found no relief from his headache. He’d get temporary relief from medicine but then a week or two later, the pain would begin again and his temples would start to throb so terribly that he’d burst into tears. Then one day his Dada brought him a book from his old friend Shyam Ratan (who was in the thread trade, but was a hakim by hobby)—A Treasury of Medicine—and he told Chetan’s mother he’d found an amazing remedy for headaches in there. Chetan should be fed kheer made of musk melon seeds for seven days.
Ma was astonished and she asked Dada via Chetan what musk melon–seed kheer was like. Dada read the book and said that actually it was just kheer made with rice but it was cooked in musk melon–seed milk.
There was no shortage of melon seeds in the house: On the dark night of Ekadashi, Chetan’s mother always ordered five to ten seers (depending on how generous she could afford to be) of melon to be given as alms. Chetan and his brothers also got quite a bit of melon to eat, and melons came to them from the homes of their patrons as well. The seeds of the melons were not thrown out but tossed into a clay pot. When enough had collected there, Ma put them in a brass sieve and scrubbed them clean. The pulp came out of the sieve and flowed down the drain and only the milky-white seeds would remain. These she’d dry on a cloth spread out on a charpoy in the sun. When there was no other work, or if there was some gathering to attend, women of the mohalla would bring tiny baskets that contained a few seeds wrapped in a damp cloth. The women would chat and hull the seeds with small wooden tongs. When she had free time, or rather, when she had time to go visiting in the gali or the neighbour women would come to her house, Chetan’s mother would also hull the seeds while chatting. Sometimes when she made halwa or kheer, she would add the hulled seeds to them.
That very evening, Ma soaked some poppy seeds and oat bran as per Dada’s instructions. There weren’t that many hulled melon seeds in the house, so the next morning she put two fists of whole seeds in a basin along with the poppy seeds and oat bran that had soaked overnight, and then she pounded them thoroughly, added some water, strained it through a cloth and extracted the milk. She put the dregs in the basin again and rubbed them with a stick. After grinding and rubbing them two or three times this way, all the milk came out. Then she threw out the dregs and strained the water from the oat bran and mixed it with the milk. After that, she ordered half a seer of cow’s milk from Ramditta’s shop and poured it in and heated it over the fire. When it had cooked a bit, she added some basmati rice and after a little while she added two large spoonfuls of pure ghee and five or six small cardamoms, ground. Ma started work on the mixture early in the morning. At around one in the afternoon the kheer was ready. Chetan was feeling hungry. The kheer tasted delicious to him—so delicious that afterwards, whenever he thought of it, the fragrance came back to him.
Ma fed him kheer for seven days. And truly, after that, he never had such a headache again. When Dina Nath found out that Chetan’s grandfather had a book with a remedy that had brought him comfort, he begged him to ask his grandfather for it. Chetan did, and Dina Nath began coming to his house every evening. He would sit and read the book and note down remedies. Sometimes Chetan would read them out and Dina Nath would take notes.
They had not yet finished the book, when one day, Dina Nath gave Chetan’s Dada a small vial of digestive powder. He let Chetan, his mother and his brothers taste a bit of the powder as well. Chetan’s Dada tasted it and remarked, ‘This has ammonium chloride in it.’
‘There are a total of twenty other ingredients besides ammonium chloride, Dada ji,’ replied Dina Nath proudly.
Chetan’s Dada belched loudly. ‘This is useful for flatulence,’ he said.
‘You won’t find a better powder for digestion than this,’ said Dina Nath. ‘If Uncle Dal Chand hadn’t helped me, it wouldn’t have been made. It took four days to prepare. Grinding up all the different ingredients, then weighing them out according to measurements and mixing them. If you ever have a digestive complaint, let me know. I’ll make it for you right away.’
After a few days, Aunty Purandei’s children came down with whooping cough in the Jhamans’ gali. When none of the hakims or doctors were able to do anything (what could they do when no one could cure it anyway—the neighbourhood was poor and medical treatment cost money), Dina Nath concocted a medicine following a remedy he’d noted down from A Treasury of Medicine. He bought some small long peppers from the grocer’s shop. He got a goat’s liver, tore it open with a knife and stuffed it with the long peppers. He placed the liver in a clay pot, sealed it with flour mixed with water, and cooked it in a one-hundred-dung-cake fire. Then he opened the cover of the vessel and carefully separated the long peppers from the liver. He ground them up and made powder packets to give to Aunty Purandei and told her to have her children lick them with honey. Whooping cough is a tyrant and can cause discomfort for months. When the children found relief, Dina Nath became the honorary hakim of the neighbourhood. Whoever had discomfort would go straight to Dina Nath, and he would make them medicine.
He enjoyed his work as a hakim so much that goldsmithing became an annoyance. He’d set diamonds and pearls into jewellery with his father and uncle and work with gold as well, but he used all his spare time to read books on Yunani medicine and prepare medicines at night. He started subscribing to a journal of Yunani medicine from Lahore, from which he learned that he could not only study medicine through a correspondence course but he could also pass the Hazik exam. For the next four years, through relentless toil, he not only passed the Hazik exam, but came in first, and he also attained the rank of gold medallist. The very next day after passing the exam, he hung a large, heavy sign in the middle of the bazaar in front of the jewellery shop (although it was still just a jewellery shop), on which was written in both English and Urdu:
Hakim Lala Dina Nath, Hakim Hazik (Gold Medallist)
But the jewellery-making business and the medical business could not coexist side by side. There wasn’t enough room in the shop. The two teapoys out fro
nt were for Thallu Ram and Dina Nath, and Uncle Dal Chand sat inside the shop. There wasn’t even any space for the patients to sit. And the demand for gem-setting had been decreasing for a couple of years. Then Dina Nath rented out two sitting rooms in Rayzada Khushwant Ray’s house, which opened out into Bajiyanwala Bazaar, and established his dispensary there.
When Chetan had come to town for his own wedding, he’d also visited Dina Nath’s dispensary. A curtain divided the sitting room in two. Outside was Hakim Sahib’s table, a small box of medicines and a book rack. On the other side of the curtain there was a bench, covered by a dhurrie, a sheet and a bolster. A stethoscope also hung from a peg there . . . ‘Hakims check a patient’s urine and pulse,’ thought Chetan to himself. ‘What does he want with a stethoscope?’ But then he thought that perhaps Dina Nath was also learning how to be a medical doctor alongside his hakim practice. When he mentioned this to Anant, he burst out laughing. ‘Dina Nath doesn’t put the stethoscope on people’s chests, he places it on their stomachs,’ Anant had said. ‘The bastard is a total fraud.’ But Chetan didn’t believe Anant. He had unbroken faith in Dina Nath’s intelligence and honesty.
The pharmacy was in the other sitting room, which Dina Nath’s father Lala Thallu Ram had taken charge of. One morning when Chetan passed through the bazaar, he found Lala Thallu Ram sweeping the sitting room. Thallu Ram was simultaneously the dispensary’s chaprasi, counter clerk and accountant, and Dina Nath had become ‘Hakim Sahib’. Even Thallu Ram now called his own son ‘Hakim Sahib’.
But the dispensary couldn’t survive for more than a year. The thing was that Dina Nath had imitated Delhi’s Hamdard Pharmacy and Lahore’s Kaviraj Ramdas in opening a dispensary. He’d forgotten that there’s a world of difference between Delhi and Lahore on the one hand, and Jalandhar on the other. And then the folks in Kallowani Mohalla, Chowk Chaddhiyan, Rasta Bazaar, Kot Pushka, Chowk Qadeshah, and Chowk Kharadiyan, all of whom Dina Nath needed in order to run his dispensary, were used to Hakim Nabi Jan. They took their prescriptions from Hakim Nabi Jan and had them filled by Jeetu Attar in Panjpir. Hakim Nabi Jan was a royal hakim. He received a monthly salary from several princely states. He took handsome fees from the rich, but for two hours every morning and evening, he saw poor people for free and wrote out prescriptions. Why would those who had been going to him for years get prescriptions from Dina Nath and buy his expensive medicines? Slowly the people of the mohalla began to complain that that bastard Dina Nath was a thug . . . after all, he’s just a jeweller, isn’t he? And everyone knows a jeweller will skimp on gold even when making jewellery for his own mother. That’s what everyone was saying in the mohalla. And on top of that, as soon as the dispensary opened, people in the mohalla started to speak of themselves as Dina Nath’s brothers or his uncles, and began to consider it their right to take loans from him and not pay him back. The result of all this was that in just a year, Dina Nath had to close the dispensary. But there was also another reason for this: he’d learned how to make vinegar from water from a book similar to The Treasury of Medicine in order to fill a shortfall and, after making enough doses of it, he began to sell it cheaper than real vinegar. Finally, he got caught. This gave him a bad reputation and forced him to close up shop.
In the City a Mirror Wandering Page 8