In the City a Mirror Wandering

by Upendranath Ashk

  ‘Nishtar . . . Nishtar!’

  When no response came, he walked through the doorway, climbed the stairs, and knocked loudly on the door.

  ‘Nishtar!’

  4 Daal is the fourth letter in the Urdu alphabet. [Daal is actually the eleventh letter in the Urdu alphabet, but the first letter in the fourth group of letters, which must be what Ashk meant by this footnote. This poem is part of the ‘Si-Harfi’ genre of Punjabi poetry described in Falling Walls by Ashk, thus: ‘Si-Harfi = A series of baits in which each bait starts with each letter of the Urdu alphabet.’—trans.]

  5 T.C. are the poet Tarachand’s initials.

  10

  ‘Come in, sit down, my brother will be here soon,’ said a small girl staring at the ground as she opened the door.

  Chetan walked across the courtyard and sat down on a filthy chair in Nishtar’s room, but nearly fell over. The chair was missing a leg. It had been propped up against the wall, balancing on its remaining three legs. In order to stay seated, one had to keep the back against the wall, and Chetan had pulled it out slightly to sit down.

  The girl suppressed a smile with great difficulty and remarked ruefully, ‘I’ve told my brother to get it fixed many times. Someone’s going to break their head open one of these days; but he doesn’t ever listen to me. Sit over there on the charpoy or push the chair up against the wall.’

  ‘No problem, no problem,’ said Chetan, relieving some of his embarrassment by pushing the chair against the wall. He sat down, picked up a newspaper from the charpoy and began to fan himself.

  The girl ran to get a fan, and set it down quietly in front of him. These actions seemed to have left her out of breath. Eyes downcast, she asked, ‘Shall I make you lassi or shikanji?’

  Chetan was acquainted with Nishtar’s financial situation, but in a Punjabi home (especially before Partition), it was unheard of not to serve a guest lassi or sharbat.

  ‘No, just bring me some cold water from the pot,’ Chetan replied, picking up the fan.

  The girl went away. She was twelve or thirteen. She wasn’t beautiful like Neela, but she wasn’t ugly either. Like Nishtar, her left eye was a bit squinty, but where Nishtar’s squint made him look ugly, hers made her more beautiful . . . ‘Was Neela’s fate written on her forehead, or was Chanda’s?’ thought Chetan. ‘There is no other fate for lower-middle-class girls. Who knows when things will ever change? Perhaps when they are truly free, when their situation is better than that of sheep. One shake, one strong shake, and these walls imprisoning the middle class will collapse. True, the independence movement has brought some outside their homes, but how many? Maybe not even one per cent.’

  And Chetan imagined a full cloud full of bashful raindrops, each wondering which drops would leave first. One would fall, then another, then the rain would descend in torrents.

  ‘Perhaps the women jumping into the independence movement are like those first drops of rain,’ thought Chetan.

  He thought about his own neighbourhood. During the movements of 1921 or 1931, not one woman had left the house, not one had gone to jail. Many had not even seen a rally. If they were asked ‘Do you want freedom?’ perhaps none would even have been able to reply.

  Chetan sighed deeply.

  ‘Here you go!’

  Chetan lifted his head. The girl stood before him with a glass of kacchi lassi in her hand. Chetan wanted to ask, ‘Why this formality?’ But he didn’t say anything. He took the glass from her hand and nearly drank the whole thing down in one gulp.

  The girl stood still, her eyes glued to the ground, and when he was done drinking, she took the glass and went away.

  ‘Will Nishtar be long?’ he called out.

  She stopped but didn’t turn around. ‘He said he was coming right back when he went out,’ she replied, as though speaking to the floor. ‘He didn’t eat before going out. He must be on his way back.’

  And she went away.

  Chetan looked all about the room—it was a small balcony he’d visited a few times before. A charpoy scattered with books and papers was set along the left side of the room. Then there was a broken teapoy and the three-legged chair (the one on which he was now seated, somehow). On a tablet resting on the teapoy lay some papers, pen and ink, and the new issue of Sadaqat, which Chetan had picked up in his nervousness, then tossed aside when the fan had arrived. To the right side, on the wall above, was a stack of files for Sadaqat.

  Chetan picked up the issue of Sadaqat again—it was a six-page Urdu weekly. The name of the journal was written on the front page in a flowery style that looked especially vulgar to Chetan. Beneath the title was printed a couplet:

  Oh to dissolve into fidelity!

  Indeed I shall wipe out all falsity

  And beneath the couplet was printed in thin Arabic letters the name ‘Nishtar’.

  ‘As though without the name, the people reading this couplet would think it must have been written by Iqbal,’ Chetan laughed to himself.

  His gaze travelled further down. Inside a long, rounded border was written:

  Owner-editor Nanda Lal ‘Nishtar’ Hunarvi

  Chetan chuckled to himself at both these titles. First at ‘owner’ (Nishtar must consider this pamphlet to be no less than the Tribune), then at ‘Hunarvi’ (so Nishtar had also joined the ranks of Hunar Sahib’s pupils. First ‘Abr’, then ‘Rehmat’, now ‘Hunar’—who knows how many more gurus Nishtar would follow!).

  *

  Chetan was in Class Six when he first saw Nishtar, who was still ‘Nanda Lal’ back then. He still remembered that evening. The Non-cooperation Movement had been in full swing. When he’d got up that morning, he’d seen Rayzada Khushwant Ray, the adopted son of the late Ray Sahib Dayal Chand who lived in the house across the way, writing in beautiful letters with chalk above the old, flowery, shisham-wood door frame of the medieval brick house:

  Supporters of non-cooperation should not come here asking for foreign clothing, or a court case will be opened against them.

  Chetan didn’t understand the meaning of ‘non-cooperation’, so Bhai Sahib told him that Mahatma Gandhi had urged people not to work with the government—that was what non-cooperation meant. The whole country was on fire. Schools and colleges were closing. People had given up wearing foreign clothing, they had quit drinking liquor—all this to destroy the trade of those damned money-grubbing English.

  His brother told him all sorts of things he didn’t understand. But that day when he went to school, the first bell had not yet rung when he saw all the boys running out of their classrooms. Someone must have said something in the hallway that made them all get up and come outside. He followed them. Outside the schoolyard a huge crowd of boys had gathered in the field. Someone was standing on a stool giving a speech on the other side. Chetan couldn’t see or hear a thing as he stood behind the oldest boys. Then a loud slogan echoed through the crowd—‘Long live!’ and everyone shouted as one—‘The revolution!’ And the crowd took off towards Adda Kapurthala beyond the police line—singing Vande Mataram and chanting ‘Long live the revolution!’ Chetan was at the very back—he’d seen his teachers standing by the school gate looking oddly helpless and embarrassed.

  Chetan couldn’t make out the entire song. But he heard one refrain again and again that reached him like a growing wave:

  Oh Gandhi, he was put in prison too

  And gave us homespun cotton

  After this refrain, they’d yell ‘Long live!’ at the top of their lungs and Chetan cried out ‘The revolution!’ with the others.

  From Adda Kapurthala they went to Imam Nasiruddin, then Bara Bazaar, then Bohar Wala Bazaar, then Bhairon Bazaar . . . thousands of people joined the procession, to the point that Chetan could no longer even hear the people singing up ahead. He felt tired too, so when they got near the statue of Bhairav, he left via Gali Tamakhiyan and came home through Papadiyan Bazaar.

  In the afternoon, he had been playing chaupar with Badda, Debu and Hansa when suddenly they h
eard cries of ‘Long live the revolution!’ and the national anthem again. They rushed outside, abandoning the chaupar game. They’d only reached the well, when a volunteer appeared from the direction of the bazaar. He held aloft the national flag, and behind him came other volunteers wearing homespun kurta pyjamas and Gandhi caps, singing the homespun anthem and holding a sheet by four corners that was so weighted down with foreign-made clothing that it touched the ground.

  They stopped when they entered the chowk of the mohalla and spread the sheet out on the ground. Two volunteers got on the plinth of the well and began to sing, and everyone joined in. Although it had been ten or eleven years since Chetan had heard that song, he remembered the first verse even today:

  Wearing a homespun gown

  Blowing the trumpet of civil disobedience

  Loading the cannon-balls in the spinning wheel

  Shoot cotton-balls at Lancashire

  at ’Shire

  Shoot cotton-balls at Lancashire

  Everyone will do as Gandhi says

  Everyone will wear the shroud on their heads

  Many a Jallianwala could happen again

  Take out your rifles, and tell this to Dyer

  to Dyer

  Shoot cotton-balls at Lancashire

  Even after so many years had gone by, Chetan still remembered how the singers’ faces glowed with a peculiar martyr-like zeal. Listening to the song sent chills down his spine, and as it ended, Bansi leapt up and joined in shouting ‘Long live!’ and Chetan shouted with the rest of them ‘The revolution!’

  After giving a brief but brilliant speech, the leader of the procession went from door to door asking for foreign-made clothing. It was a poor mohalla, and people didn’t have much clothing; no one was going to tell them to donate their silks to burn in the bonfire. The housewives mostly gave old torn clothes. Even when all they got was a foreign-made rag, the neighbourhood echoed with cries of ‘Victory to Gandhi Baba!’ and ‘Long live the revolution!’ Chetan ran to his mother, who gave him a very old silk lehnga that looked quite new (since she saved up all her expensive clothing for her future daughters-in-law) and Chetan was proud as anything when he brought it to the leader. When the procession turned from their homes towards Rayzada Khushwant Ray’s mansion they found the heavy shisham door closed. Then someone saw the notice written in chalk—

  Supporters of the non-cooperation movement . . .

  Someone else cried, ‘He’s a toady!’ and the people of the mohalla joined the cry with the processioners, ‘Yes he is!’

  They wailed, ‘Death to—Khushwant Ray!’ and ‘He’s a toady—yes he is!’, beat their breasts and cried out their slogans of ‘Victory to—Gandhi Baba!’ and ‘Long live—the revolution!’ Then the members of the procession continued on their way, carrying the heap of foreign clothing and singing their song, and Chetan followed.

  After the procession had passed Harlal Pansari’s shop, it made its way through Bajiyanwala Bazaar and was passing beneath the sitting rooms of Khushwant Ray’s mansion, which opened out on to the bazaar, when all of a sudden, the upstairs windows opened and the Rayzada’s elder wife (he had two wives, the first was from Jalandhar’s Sondhi family, which was quite prominent in the independence movement, but since she had no children, the Rayzada had got married a second time, to a woman from a poor family) threw down a silk sari with a brocade border. And from one end to the other, the bazaar rang out with cries of ‘Victory to—Mahatma Gandhi!’ and ‘Long live—the revolution!’

  Chetan followed the procession outside the city, half a mile or so beyond Kot Kishanchand, to the Gandhi Pavilion. The Gandhi Pavilion was actually a wide, dried-out water tank, which was also called Nadiram’s tank. Brick stairs led down into the tank from all four sides. A rally had taken place there the first time Mahatma Gandhi had come to Jalandhar and since then, it had been called the Gandhi Pavilion, and that’s where all Congress rallies had taken place. Chetan felt exhausted from walking so far. The steps of the tank were completely packed. Such an enormous crowd had gathered from different neighbourhoods, it seemed as though the entire city was there. Chetan wanted to go up front and sit near the stage, but he couldn’t see any empty space anywhere. He was so exhausted it was difficult for him to take another step, so he sat right down on an upper step. There were no microphones in that era, nor had a platform been built to fill up half the tank. The enormous, dry Nadiram tank looked like the stadiums of ancient times, but the speakers were accustomed to giving speeches at the top of their lungs, and when, after the singing of Vande Mataram, a small boy came on stage, and the chairman of the rally introduced him, even Chetan, seated on the topmost step, could hear his voice. The chairman praised the wisdom of young Nanda Lal, his power as a poet and his love of self-rule. Mother India was proud of such worthy sons, he said, who jump into the independence movement at such a young age, and he expressed the hope that the day was not far off when Mother India would be freed from the chains of slavery, and the name Nanda Lal ‘Azad’—freedom (that was Nanda Lal’s nom de plume in those days)—would echo in all corners of the nation. And he asked Nanda Lal to read his poetry.

  Before reading his poem, Nanda Lal said a few words. His voice didn’t reach Chetan, but Chetan certainly noticed that it bore no trace of anxiety at all (Nanda Lal must have been just a year or so younger than him) as he addressed that enormous crowd. He exuded amazing self-confidence. When he’d finished his brief speech before reading his poem, the crowd applauded as loudly as possible and shouted ‘Long live the revolution!’ and Chetan felt quite envious of him.

  After his speech, Nanda Lal began reciting his poem with great enthusiasm. Chetan couldn’t hear a single line, but he saw that after each verse the audience applauded and shouted, ‘Long live the revolution!’

  After Nanda Lal’s poem, two or three leaders gave speeches, followed by the chairman. But Chetan heard and saw nothing else. He kept thinking about that boy’s face and the applause of the audience.

  Just then, he noticed that there was a pile of foreign clothing in the centre of the tank; oil had been sprinkled over it and it was being set on fire—and right at that moment, he heard cries of ‘Police!’ ‘Police!’ and the people sitting on the top steps suddenly stood up. Chetan saw uniformed police marching up behind him, lathis on their shoulders. They climbed on to the broken pillar made of medieval bricks, which at one time must have held up one side of a gate. Then Chetan saw a dark-skinned Muslim wrestler-type police inspector with a baton in his hand make his way down the path through the spectators (on one side were women and on the other were men) to the stage, and behind him a division of lathi-armed police climbed down the stairs. He watched as the police inspector stepped on to the stage and said something to the people there that made them stand at once. He took a step forward, they stepped back, and Chetan saw the lathis begin to swing. Chaos broke out. Chetan had no idea when he jumped from the pillar in that chaos and climbed up on to a farmer’s sleeping perch overlooking the field across the street.

  The next day when he heard that twelve men had been wounded in the rally and thirteen arrested, including twelve-year-old Nanda Lal ‘Azad’, his heart filled with respect and envy.

  Nanda Lal was given a punishment of three months’ hard labour. After he was released, Chetan sought him out and made friends with him. Later, when the self-rule movement had died down and the Hindu–Muslim riots began, the Mahavir Dal was born and the two of them became members together. Chetan started reciting Punjabi couplets as well and they both played the flute in the Mahavir Dal band. Nanda Lal was first the pupil of the Punjabi poet ‘Abr’ and when he became the pupil of the Punjabi Poetry Association leader Ustad ‘Rehmat’, he changed his nom de plume again, this time to ‘Nishtar’, and took Chetan with him and made him Rehmat’s pupil as well. Rehmat was a dyer and his pupils were primarily the city’s drifters: unemployed, lower-middle-class boys. Chetan’s own middle-class sensibility would not allow him to wander about with such a low-life,
ignorant dyer, nor to kiss up to him in his capacity as poetry mentor. He went to Rehmat’s place a couple of times and also participated in the Mahavir Dal poetry gatherings. Then he, like most of the educated students of his social class, began to take an interest in Urdu poetry and only greeted Rehmat Sahib from a distance. After that, he met Hunar Sahib and, in his heart, he made him his ustad instead.

  *

  ‘So Nishtar has become a pupil of Hunar’s as well,’ he said to himself on seeing the title ‘Hunarvi’ next to Nishtar’s name on the weekly. He wondered what couplets Hunar Sahib had recited to Nishtar as his own.

  And he turned over the first page of Sadaqat. On the very next page was printed a poem by Janab Nanda Lal Sahib ‘Nishtar Hunarvi’—called ‘Sorrow and Poverty’. Chetan had heard this poem of Hunar Sahib’s before. Hunar Sahib had reeled Chetan in, in just one sitting, by reciting short verses in the style popularized by the Urdu poet ‘Hafiz’ Jalandhari. Whenever he took on a new pupil, Hunar Sahib would have the pupil write that very same poem under his own name and publish it in some lesser known journal. Several years ago, that poem had been published under Chetan’s name by Munshi Girijashankar in his journal Girija. At the thought of Girija, Chetan recalled Munshi Girijashankar’s hippopotamus-shaped moustaches, and how, since no one pays much attention to the placement of the diacritics zabar and zer in Urdu, he used to read ‘Girija’ as ‘Garja’ or ‘thunder’, and had thought it a very odd name for a monthly journal. When Hunar Sahib had submitted the poem to Munshi Girijashankar under Chetan’s name, he had thanked him, smiling through his enormous whiskers, as though he’d offered him not just a poem, but dues for a yearly subscription.

  As he sat there, he cast a cursory glance over the poem. As soon as his eye fell on the final verse he had to smile: