In the City a Mirror Wandering

by Upendranath Ashk

  ‘I’m not cutting a picture out of some magazine,’ Hamid had retorted, and he told Chetan how he’d written a letter to Meenakshi in English (Hamid was quite proud of his English) and was hoping to receive a picture soon. And he would only hang an autographed photograph in his room.

  When two months had passed after this conversation and no response had come, let alone a picture, Chetan asked about it one evening, and Hamid told him morosely that he’d written to Meenakshi and she hadn’t responded.

  Who knows what got into Chetan. ‘If you’re that keen on it, shall I get a picture of Meenakshi for you?’ he asked.

  ‘How will you get it?’ asked Hamid, surprised. His eyes widened and his lips parted slightly to reveal the inward-pointing row of teeth. For a few moments he looked Chetan up and down, then his expression changed to sarcastic contempt. ‘He’s going to get her picture when I couldn’t,’ he thought, and after staring at Chetan incredulously, he burst out laughing loudly.

  Chetan was bewildered. Somewhat annoyed, he replied, ‘You’ll get your picture. Now step aside.’

  And after talking about this and that for a few minutes, he left. Hamid’s sarcastic laughter had enraged him and he had decided that if he couldn’t get Meenakshi’s photo, he’d never go to Hamid’s house again.

  Actually, a strategy had suddenly occurred to Chetan when he saw Hamid’s despondency, and it was his faith in that strategy that made him promise to get the picture for him. Meenakshi was not just a successful heroine, but also an MA—and she was also the daughter of a judge. There was no way she’d send her photo in response to a letter from some third-year student, but he strongly believed that if a young lady were to write to her, and if she too were a graduate, and a lady author to boot, Meenakshi would feel compelled to respond. And Chetan decided that he would write a letter in the guise of a lady writer; he’d praise the style of the essay Meenakshi had written on the art of Director Advani, he would agree with the content, he would write of his high hopes for Indian films thanks to Director Advani, and about how he’d definitely raise the status of Indian films thanks to his knowledge and experience attained abroad. And after writing all this, at the end, he’d ask Meenakshi for a signed photograph, assuring her that he would write about her in northern magazines.

  As he thought about all this, Chetan pondered what his lady writer’s name would be. He thought up several names but none sounded real to him. He wanted a name that was simple and one that he liked. After some thought, he chose the name ‘Chanda’. But since Chanda was going to become a writer and she’d have to have a nom de plume, he named her Chanda Devi ‘Kumad’ or ‘night-blooming lotus’, and he wrote a letter to Meenakshi under that name. Although he consulted a dictionary many times and wrote simple and fluent English, he wanted to make sure there were no errors. If he’d been writing a letter to someone else, he’d have gone to Hamid, but he didn’t want Hamid to get even a whiff of what he was up to. He went to Amichand. Amichand corrected his letter, but he objected to Chanda’s nom de plume. ‘It shouldn’t be spelled “Kumad”, it should be spelled “Kumud”,’ he said. ‘But then Kumud is masculine; a woman shouldn’t have a masculine nom de plume!’ He changed Kumud to the feminine form, ‘Kumudini’.

  Chanda Devi ‘Kumudini’, BA—it sounded grating to Chetan. The name ‘Kumudini’ could also be used on its own and, for just a second, he thought that instead of Chanda Devi he would just make the name Kumudini. But Kumudini didn’t sound simple enough. After some thought, Chetan left the name as it was. In the midst of this, he saved up one rupee. He bought a lovely, fragrant, pale-pink writing pad—foreign—and a matching pink envelope from Bhairon Bazaar. Then he copied out the letter in pretty handwriting on two sheets of the paper. He wrote Meenakshi’s address on the envelope and for the sender’s address he wrote, ‘Chanda Devi “Kumud”, BA, Kallowani Mohalla, Jalandhar City (Punjab)’ and mailed the letter. That same day, he went to the post office and told the postman that if any mail came for Chanda Devi ‘Kumud’, Kallowani Mohalla, he should throw it into his sitting room.

  Chetan had so much faith in the likely success of his scheme that when he received a reply from Meenakshi a mere seven days later, and a large autographed photo printed on expensive glossy paper to boot, he wasn’t a bit surprised, although he was quite pleased. He went to Hamid’s place that very evening and tossed the packet with the photo on to the writing desk before him. ‘Here!’ he said.

  Hamid opened the packet, took out the photo and just stared at it. Then he turned it over and saw that on its back the following words were written in English:

  For Chanda Devi ‘Kumud’

  With love,

  Meenakshi

  ‘Who is this Chanda Devi Kamadd?’ asked Hamid suddenly.

  ‘Not Kamadd, Kumud,’ said Chetan laughing. ‘That’s Chanda’s nom de plume. In Hindi, “Kumud” is what they call a lotus that blooms at night.’

  But Hamid was still not able to pronounce it correctly.

  ‘But who is this Kumudd?’ he asked.

  ‘Do you want to eat a mango or count the trees?’ asked Chetan with excitement. ‘Frame this picture and put it on the wall so it’s before your eyes at all times!’

  But Hamid wouldn’t let the matter drop until he’d heard the whole story from Chetan. When he learned the truth, Chetan’s prestige increased quite a bit in his eyes and their friendship reached a more equal status.

  *

  But Chetan and Hamid weren’t equals. Chetan knew this perfectly well himself. Though he’d won Hamid’s respect by obtaining Meenakshi’s picture, Chetan had none of his command of a wide variety of subjects—society, culture, politics, philosophy. He had talent, but Hamid had knowledge. Chetan had that spring that bursts forth from rocky terrain on the strength of who knows what rites undertaken in a previous birth. He needed endless streams of study and experience so the spring wouldn’t dry up and would continue to flow to form a great river. Hamid had those streams in his possession, and after winning his friendship, Chetan decided to make those streams his own as well.

  Hamid liked to read Western philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Schopenhauer, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Bergson and Russell and he often quoted Aristotle and Schopenhauer in conversation. Chetan tried to have a go at this field as well, so he borrowed Plato’s famous book, The Republic, from Hamid, but for some reason, he found it extremely boring. After reading just a few pages, he began to feel sleepy. Theory and philosophy bored him, whereas novels, stories and poetry robbed him of his sleep at night. The very next day he returned the book. Then Hamid recited some of Tagore’s poems in English (of which he had two collections) to him, and Chetan was engrossed in them for weeks, filling entire notebooks with prose and poetry written in the same style. He also translated Tagore’s plays Karna and Kunti and Natir Puja through the medium of English, and even attempted to write a one-act play about the Buddha in imitation of those.

  Although Chetan had heard the names Hafiz Jalandhari and Iqbal from Hunar Sahib, he actually studied them in the company of Hamid. He’d read so many of Hafiz Jalandhari’s poems at Hamid’s house—‘Apne Man men Prit Basā Le’ (‘Bring the Beloved into Your Heart’), ‘Dil Hai Parāye Bas men’ (‘My Heart Belongs to Another’), ‘Jāg Soz-e-Ishq Jāg’ (‘Awake, Oh Passion of Love, Awake!’)—and memorized them. Hamid also knew Iqbal’s ghazal by heart:

  Kabhi ai haqiqat-e-muntazar nazar ā libās-e-majaz men

  For once, Oh awaited reality, reveal yourself in material form

  . . . as well as the poem ‘Nayā Shivālā’, or ‘New Temple’. He’d sway back and forth, singing:

  Sach keh dūn ai Brāhmin, gar tū burā na māne

  But tere butkadon ke sab ho gaye purāne7

  I’ll tell you Brahmin, if you don’t object

  All the idols in your temple have grown old

  And Chetan memorized all those ghazals and poems of Iqbal and Hafiz as well. One day, when Chetan went to Hamid’s place, he said, ‘Have a
seat, I’m going to recite something from a new romantic poet for you. I don’t think we’ve seen his like in Urdu.’

  And before Chetan could ask the name of the poet, Hamid began in his zeal to recite:

  Oh love, take me somewhere, take me from this place of sin

  from this world of hate, from this existence filled with hatred

  from these sensual people, from this sensuality

  Take me somewhere else, far away

  Oh love, take me away

  I am a priest of love, you are my beloved Krishna

  You are my beloved Krishna, this is the boat of love

  This is the boat of love, you are its oarsman

  No worries at all, take me away

  Oh love take me away somewhere

  Now I am leaving this merciless world

  Now I am turning away from callous friends

  Now I am breaking whatever hope I had

  No, I cannot take it any more, take me

  Oh love, take me away somewhere

  Injustice is the enemy of free thought

  The killer of aspirations, the thief of hopes

  It is the slaughter-house of feelings, it is the graveyard of emotion

  Come let’s go somewhere away from here

  Oh love, take me away somewhere

  In those days, Chetan loved Kunti with all his heart. Since Kunti had become engaged to the pundit from Sham Chaurasi, he knew he had no hope of his love ever amounting to anything, but this had not diminished his feeling in the slightest, nor his bittersweet pain, despite the despair that loomed. He too, with the poet, wished to escape to some place far off from this ‘world of hate’, where there were no social bonds, where there was no deception of fate, where there were no narrow-minded human natures and customs—he’d be there, his lover would be there too, and the God of Love . . . and Hamid recited the stanza of the poem:

  Perhaps there’s a place on the other side of the world

  That has longed for centuries to see a human face

  That is awash with solitude

  If such exists, then take me there

  Oh, love, take me away somewhere

  So it seemed to Chetan that the poet had said exactly what was on his mind! And from that day, he and Hamid became fans of the author, the poet Akhtar Shirani. Not only did he note the poem down in his notebook, he took down the complete address of the monthly journal edited and run by Akhtar Shirani, Khyalistan—‘Idealand’—(in which the poem was published) so that he might himself save up to order that journal somehow.

  From that day on, the two friends threw over the old poets and became Akhtar Shirani fans. Iqbal stirred the mind, but Akhtar stirred the heart and took the readers’ hearts far from filth into the ‘valley of light’, where the ‘foothills of the mountains’ were filled with ‘exhilarating breezes’ and ‘pure moonlit nights’. Just as film fans memorize every detail of the lives of their favourite actor or actress—the loves, marriages, break-ups, remarriages—they knew all about Akhtar Shirani’s love life, which they embellished in their imaginations, then used to impress their friends. In those days, Akhtar Shirani had started writing poems addressed to a young lady named ‘Salma’, and all sorts of conjectures were being made about ‘Akhtar’s Salma’ in Urdu literary circles. Some said that Salma resided only in Akhtar’s imagination, others said that no, she actually lived in Lahore and wrote poetry herself. Whatever the case might be, Chetan just adored some of the sonnets and poems written about Salma, especially—

  I’ve heard my Salma will come at night into the valley . . .

  And—

  Having placed my heart with Salma, I have become disgraced with all the neighbourhood girls

  In those days, Chetan kept a separate notebook in which he wrote down only those poems by Akhtar Shirani about Salma. There weren’t that many of them, but Chetan refused to write anything else in the notebook.

  And for the two final years of college, Chetan and Hamid were practically inseparable. Chetan wrote stories in those days, he tried to write some plays too, and with Hamid’s help, he not only made a fool of the owner of the local cinema house (through the medium of Chanda Devi ‘Kumud’), but they also pulled the wool over the eyes of the owner-editor of a famous film magazine from Lahore, G.R. Oberoi. Oberoi not only published ‘Kumud’s’ articles, he also sent her books on film writing and a photo of himself, and attempted several times to come to Jalandhar to meet her (Chetan always put him off). After doing his BA, Hamid left for Aligarh for his LLB, and Chetan went to a daily newspaper office in Lahore . . . and today they’d suddenly met again.

  *

  After removing Chetan’s hand from his shoulder, Hamid walked along at a slight remove from him while telling him rather loftily that he hadn’t ended up doing an LLB; the Lucknow radio station was opening, they’d needed a programme assistant, and he had been selected in an interview.

  ‘But I heard there was only a radio station in Delhi so far . . .’

  ‘No, just this January another one opened in Lucknow. Only five candidates were chosen from five hundred applicants. Even some England-returned people applied, but I got the highest score in the interview.’

  ‘Well, you are knowledgeable,’ said Chetan.

  And Hamid told him that the All India Radio controller, Fielden Sahib himself, was among the interviewers and that he was very pleased by his interview (he didn’t mention that he also had a powerful recommendation from a member of the Counsel of the Viceroy [due to the influence of the Nawab of Khairpur]). Hamid told him at length what questions had been asked in the interview and how he’d answered them. In the midst of this, he laughed and smiled several times, and Chetan noticed that although his upper row of teeth was still turned in a bit, he no longer looked obsequious when he smiled, but condescending and light-hearted instead.

  After telling him about his interview, Hamid told Chetan all about his work, about how he ran the entire station. The director was Sindhi, and an English professor at Delhi University. He didn’t know a word of Urdu. He was an absolute fool, and Hamid was the one who did all the work at the station—he was the one who set the schedule, produced the dramas and arranged the talks, and he had not yet made a single scheduling error. In the next ten years, radio stations would open in ten cities in India and if he didn’t become the station director during that time, then his name wasn’t . . . at this last, he slapped his hand to his chest.

  Chetan listened and listened—schedule, talks, errors—he didn’t understand a thing he was saying. He wasn’t even really sure what radio was. He’d heard a radio station had opened in Delhi. Apparently someone would say something in the studio, do some singing, and all this could be heard in Chandni Chowk. Sound boxes were affixed to pillars in the park across from Divan Hall and one could hear speeches, songs and dramas on them.

  Suddenly he asked, ‘When will a radio station open in Lahore?’

  ‘Plans are afoot, but it will take three or four years.’

  *

  By now, they’d reached Hamid’s home. He stopped in the bazaar, just outside the compound, and held out his hand. But suddenly he realized he’d just been talking about himself the whole time. He took Chetan’s hand in his own and asked, ‘What are you up to these days?’

  Chetan wanted to tell him that he was working at a famous newspaper, that he’d been in poor health and gone to Shimla for three months, that his sister-in-law had got married so he’d come back earlier than expected . . . but Hamid’s stature had grown so much that as he talked about himself, Chetan felt terribly diminished. If Hamid had brought him into his old room, offered him sharbat or something to eat and acted like an old friend, perhaps Chetan would have said something about himself, but first off, he’d been offended by him removing his hand from his shoulder, and then he’d felt distance in the way Hamid spoke (although he was speaking quite openly), and when he’d held out his hand outside his home, it seemed to Chetan that he was not an old friend he’d been close to
for two years, but rather a careerist climbing the steps of the future while treading upon the past . . . and diminishing his own importance even more, he said, ‘Oh, I’m just a translator at a daily paper: I got sick and found some temporary work in Shimla, so I went there. I’m on my way back to Lahore now. I don’t plan on staying at a newspaper; I’ll just do some part-time work so I can get an MA.’

  And before Hamid could let go of his hand and turn away, Chetan gave his hand a slight shake and went on his way.

  7 [This line is quoted incorrectly by Ashk. The line should read: ‘Tere sanamkadon ke but ho gaye purāne’—trans.]

  13

  Although clouds had gathered in the sky, the sunlight had somehow tricked them and burst through their ranks to fall squarely on one’s head. It was extremely hot and humid, and there was the usual huge crowd in Rainak Bazaar . . . But after shaking hands with Hamid, Chetan walked along, head down, not noticing anything—not the humidity, the heat, or the crowd. His feelings of insecurity that had been gnawing at him since morning due to Amichand’s contemptuous regard (or disregard) had now increased several-fold thanks to Hamid’s behaviour, and by now they completely overshadowed his senses. He had tried to hide or forget his feelings of inferiority by going to Anant’s, and Dina Nath’s, and Nishtar’s, but he’d found peace nowhere. He kept thinking about how he needed to go to Lahore immediately, quit his job at the daily paper, somehow get himself enrolled in an MA course, pass in the first division, do a doctorate, become a professor at a college, and write book after book—so many books that the sun of his brilliance would spread its rays not just throughout this country but others as well, and when its light reached his officer friends wearing down their seats in the stifling darkness of their offices, constrained by the fetters of their slavery, they’d at last get a sense of their own inferiority.